Universal Music Group (UMG) and other publishers have reached a climactic point in their lawsuit against Anthropic, urging a federal judge to rule that the artificial intelligence giant was not legally allowed to use millions of song lyrics to train its Claude AI model.
In a motion filed Tuesday (March 24), the music companies asked the judge to grant them summary judgment (an immediate victory) on the critical question in the case: Whether Anthropic made “fair use” of the lyrics when it took them without permission to train Claude.
That question — which is at the heart of dozens of lawsuits and could have trillion-dollar stakes for the booming technology — is an easy one to answer, UMG and the other publishers write in Tuesday’s filing.
“Anthropic is a $380-billion artificial intelligence company that scrapes and copies publishers’ copyrighted song lyrics on a massive scale without asking permission or paying a cent,” they write in a brief obtained by Billboard. “Anthropic’s actions are quintessential infringement — not fair use.”
UMG, Concord Music Group, ABKCO and other music companies sued Anthropic in 2023, making it one of the earliest music copyright cases. The case was later overshadowed by larger litigation filed by all three major music companies against Suno and Udio.
More than two years later, the publishers say it’s time for the court to decide the pivotal fair use issue, arguing that the doctrine was not designed to shield “unabashedly commercial” exploitation of copyrighted works in a way that directly competes with the originals.
“To be clear, this case is not a referendum on AI technology,” lawyers for the music companies write. “Publishers embrace the promise of lawfully created AI and have licensed their works for use by numerous AI companies. Publishers rightfully object, however, to Anthropic’s copying of their lyrics to build an AI product that reproduces those lyrics and generates limitless AI rip-offs, all without permission or payment.”
In a statement to Billboard, a rep for UMG and the other plaintiffs said that Anthropic had “committed copyright infringement on a massive scale” and has never denied it.
“Having established that Anthropic copied and ingested songwriters’ lyrics without permission or compensation, trained its Chatbot (Claude) to serve up those lyrics on demand, and spit out AI-generated derivatives that compete directly with human songwriters, the plaintiffs move for summary judgement. The evidence in this case is overwhelming.”
A rep for Anthropic did not immediately return a request for comment on Tuesday.
