OpenAI used lyrics in violation of copyright laws: German court

MUNICH: OpenAI’s chatbot ChatGPT violated German copyright laws by reproducing lyrics from songs by best-selling musician Herbert Groenemeyer and others, a court ruled on Tuesday, in a closely watched case against the firm over its use of lyrics to train its language models. The regional court found that the company trained its AI on protected content from nine German songs, including Groenemeyer’s hits “Maenner” and “Bochum”. The case was brought by German music rights society GEMA.

Presiding judge Elke Schwager ordered OpenAI to pay damages for the use of copyrighted material, without disclosing a figure.