US music publishers suing Anthropic make their case against AI ‘fair use’

Music publishers Universal Music Group, Concord and ABKCO have asked a judge in California to rule that US copyright law does not insulate artificial intelligence startup Anthropic from liability for copying their song lyrics to train its AI-powered chatbot Claude.

The publishers’ request, filed on Monday in federal court in San Jose, tees up a critical question in the legal battle between creators and tech companies: Does the doctrine of “fair use” apply to the copying of millions ‌of copyrighted works ⁠to ⁠train AI models?