Source: Expansión

Universal Music Group (UMG) and two record labels more filed a lawsuit against Anthropic, a San Francisco based artificial intelligence (AI) startup, which last month secured a multi-million dollar investment from Amazon.

It should be noted that the lawsuit was filed on October 18 and by means of it, the claimants alleged that the startup copied and disseminated large quantities of copyrighted works, including the lyrics to numerous musical compositions whose rights belong to the labels.

The claimants also pointed out that Anthropic’s use of the works was a systematic infringement, and asserted that the defendant cannot reproduce, distribute, display and profit with copyrighted works without authorization.

The record labels also emphasized that Anthropic infringed the ´Statute of Anne´ and urged AI technology companies to comply with the law, as advances cannot be achieved at the expense of existing and future creators.

Likewise, plaintiffs have asked the Court to order the cease of the infringing acts, along with monetary damages of up to $150,000 per infringed work. In the document attached to the lawsuit, they listed 500 works, which means that they are seeking at least $75 million for alleged copyright infringement in total.

This case joins many others arising against major AI developers for copyright infringement. As far as the music industry is concerned, UMG has been vigilant in protecting its catalog and the rights of its artists against AI-related copyright infringement; an example of the above is that last October 18, UMG established a strategic partnership with BandLab Technologies focused on the ethical use of AI to protect the rights of artists and songwriters.