Major music publishers Universal Music, Concord, and ABKCO have filed a motion for preliminary injunction against Anthropic in their ongoing copyright infringement lawsuit. The publishers aim to prevent Anthropic's AI assistant Claude from using their copyrighted works without authorization.

Key aspects of the preliminary injunction request:

• Stop Anthropic from reproducing song lyrics in Claude's responses
• Prevent unauthorized use of lyrics in training future AI models
• Implement effective guardrails in current AI models

The publishers argue that Anthropic's actions cause irreparable harm by:

• Denying copyright holders control over their works
• Failing to provide proper attribution
• Creating unauthorized derivative works
• Damaging relationships with licensed partners
• Undermining songwriter confidence in publishers

Anthropic, which recently received billions in funding from Google, maintains that using protected content as an intermediate step to create non-infringing output constitutes fair use.

Despite ongoing legal battles, the AI music landscape continues to evolve. Universal Music is pursuing AI partnerships, and YouTube recently launched "Dream Track," allowing creators to use AI-generated artist voices in Shorts. Warner Music has also announced an AI deal to recreate Edith Piaf's voice for an animated biopic.

The case, filed under docket number 5:24-cv-03811, represents a crucial moment in defining how AI companies can use copyrighted musical content.

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