Anthropic, the company behind AI-powered chatbot Claude, is arguing that the use of song lyrics to train the bot is ‘fair use’ amid an ongoing lawsuit filed by Universal Music Group and other music companies.

The lawsuit against Anthropic was filed back in 2023, with Universal Music Group taking the lead on the suit but joined by other music publishers, and accused the AI startup of “systematic and widespread infringement of their copyrighted song lyrics”.

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UMG and the other music companies urged a federal judge last month to find that Anthropic’s use of lyrics by its artists was not fair use. “Transformative use” is part of this fair use defence, and allows for works to be built upon with a different purpose from its original form.

Anthropic essentially argues that its bot transforms the works of others into something completely new, meaning this should count as fair use, and claims that the publishers have no evidence that Claude is harming them in the market, another element of fair use.

In a Monday (20 April) brief, Anthropic argued that the publishers cannot “meaningfully dispute that training on lyrics (and other copyrighted text) is transformative”, as per Billboard.  Anthropic also claims that Claude does not only ingests lyrics, but also trillions of other words to “understand the interrelationships between words and concepts in human language” so it can code software, conduct research and write documents.

“Claude’s transformative training creates a flexible, general-purpose model that can be used in myriad beneficial ways — the vast majority of which are wholly unrelated to lyrics or music,” states Anthropic’s lawyers.

In a statement provided to Billboard on 21 April, a representative for the music publishers fired back against Anthropic’s arguments, saying, “There is no excuse for Anthropic’s blatant infringement of Publishers’ copyrighted song lyrics. Anthropic’s recent filing is wrong on the facts and the law in numerous respects, and Publishers look forward to rebutting those arguments and correcting the record when they file their opposition brief.”

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