OpenAI violated copyright law, German court rules

ChatGPT creator OpenAI violated Germany's national copyright laws, according to a court in Munich.

GEMA, a German music rights group, filed a lawsuit against OpenAI last November claiming that the AI company illegally trained its AI models on popular music without consent from the rights holders.

This week a German court ruled in favor of GEMA and ordered OpenAI to pay an undisclosed sum in damages.

“We disagree with the ruling and are considering next steps,” OpenAI said in a statement, signaling that they may appeal the ruling. “The decision is for a limited set of lyrics and does not impact the millions of people, businesses and developers in Germany that use our technology every day.”

Regardless of OpenAI's statement, it is clear that the AI company along with many of its competitors, have an ongoing issue related to AI training and copyright infringement. The New York Times, The Intercept, and Mashable's parent company Ziff Davis are all currently suing OpenAI, for example, alleging that the ChatGPT creator trained its AI models on their respective content without permission.

Anthropic, the company behind AI chatbot Claude, agreed to pay a massive $1.5 billion settlement in September as the result of a class action lawsuit filed by authors who allege that its AI models were trained on pirated books.

GEMA hailed its win as “the first landmark AI ruling in Europe.”

“The internet is not a self-service store and human creative achievements are not free templates,” said GEMA chief executive Tobias Holzmüller in a statement. “Today, we have set a precedent that protects and clarifies the rights of authors: even operators of AI tools such as ChatGPT must comply with copyright law. Today, we have successfully defended the livelihoods of music creators.”