Music publishers including Universal Music, ABKCO, and Concord have filed a strong response against Anthropic in their ongoing copyright infringement lawsuit, challenging the AI company's defense of its Claude chatbot's use of protected song lyrics.

Key points from the publishers' response:

• Anthropic's new "guardrails" meant to prevent lyrics reproduction are inconsistent and potentially circumventable
• Publishers continue to find verbatim copies and unauthorized derivatives of their protected lyrics
• The argument that publishers caused infringement by testing the system is invalid, as these tests were necessary to detect violations
• Training large language models on copyrighted materials without permission is not fair use
• Anthropic's use is commercial rather than transformative
• The practice threatens traditional licensing markets and artistic control

The publishers specifically criticize Anthropic's AI system as "destructive to artistic control," noting it creates unauthorized mashups and derivatives that "contravene the songwriters' intent." They argue these modifications produce error-filled or offensive outputs that publishers "would not license at any cost."

The requested injunction seeks to:

• Make Anthropic's current protective measures permanent during litigation
• Prevent the use of protected lyrics in future AI model training

This case reflects the growing tension between AI companies and content creators over copyright protection and fair use in AI development.

The dispute continues as other AI-related copyright cases develop, including a recent partial dismissal of Sarah Silverman's class-action suit against OpenAI.

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