Players in the German music industry scored their first legal victory against OpenAI when on Tuesday, November 11, a court found that the American artificial intelligence giant had violated song copyrights. THAT “linguistic model” used by OpenAI as well “reproduction of song texts in chatbot results” is “violation of exploitation rights protected by copyright”ruled the Munich court, summarizing its decision in a press release.
“We disagree with the decision, and we are studying possible next steps.”a company spokesperson told Agence France-Presse (AFP), further stressing that the decision only concerns texts that appeared in a complaint from Germany’s copyright management body, GEMA.
If the court grants most of the final request, which seeks compensation, the court does not say how to calculate it.
The trial is the first of its kind in Europe, according to GEMA, which rejected the work as free raw material for the artificial intelligence (AI) giant, arguing that “creator’s livelihood” at stake. GEMA, which represents around 100,000 players in the music industry in Germany, filed a complaint in November 2024, accusing OpenAI of using song lyrics to train its AI models and then returning them to users, without a license or compensation from the authors.
“A clear message to the global technology industry”
Organizational demands “found, either due to the reproduction of the text in the linguistic model or its reproduction in the results”estimate the court. On the first point, “indirect perception” of this work is “sufficient to constitute reproduction”court estimates based on the case law of the Court of the European Union (CJEU). And in response, the chat robot ChatGPT has it “Making the lyrics of the disputed songs accessible to the public in an unauthorized manner”.
The decision concerns song texts by nine famous German authors. OpenAI has rejected the accusations, arguing that its models do not store individual data, but rather “reflect what they learned based on the training data set”. And because the resulting response is the result of the user’s active approach, it is not the company but the user that is responsible, OpenAI estimates.
For the Raue law firm, which represents GEMA, the Munich decision “provides legal certainty for creators, music publishers and platforms across Europe and could have an impact far beyond Germany”. He then sent “a clear message to the global technology industry”further confirmed the company.
The Association of German Journalists (DJV) welcomed this “an important step for copyright”including journalists. According to DJV, it is now clear that OpenAI “responsible for reproductions generated by AI and not by users”.
OpenAI, whose ChatGPT claims about 700 million weekly users, is one of the world leaders in artificial intelligence. These giants’ control over musical and literary works is often criticized by industry players, who demand stronger regulation, in particular through European legislation (the AI Act), to gain transparency over the data used and guarantee their revenues.
According to the international music publishing organization, the Brussels-based International Confederation of Music Publishers (ICMP), tech giants have sucked up “all world music” without respecting copyright, according to a study published on September 9 in an American magazine devoted to the recording industry Billboard.
