California judge rules against music publishers' attempt to block Anthropic's use of song lyrics for AI training
A California federal judge has denied a preliminary request from music publishers to block Anthropic from using lyrics from hundreds of songs to train its AI chatbot Claude.
In a ruling on Saturday, U.S. District Judge Eumi Lee said the publishers’ request was too broad and didn’t show that Anthropic’s actions were causing them harm that couldn’t be undone.
The publishers, which include Universal Music Group (UMG), Concord, and ABKCO, are confident of their broader case against Anthropic, while the AI developer is pleased with the court’s decision. An Anthropic spokesperson described the publishers’ request as “disruptive and amorphous.”
This is just the latest in a series of legal challenges concerning the use of copyrighted works by developers of artificial intelligence systems. Fair use is likely to be a central issue in many of these cases, although Judge Lee’s ruling did not specifically mention it.
Lee did say that the publishers were effectively asking the court to set up a licensing market for the training of AI systems, but that the question of fair use remains unresolved.
