Metal, Hardcore, Indie, Rock
In a case brought by the German music copyright group GEMA against OpenAI in the fall of 2024, the Munich Regional Court rendered a historic decision regarding copyright in respect to artificial intelligence. As reported by soundi, Teosto, a Finnish copyright agency that keeps an eye on music copyrights, provides information on the case. GEMA believed that the ChatGPT artificial intelligence system was trained using copyright-protected content by the US corporation OpenAI, which generates over $10 billion in revenue annually, without compensating the copyright holders or requesting permission to use the content. Nine German musicians’ song lyrics were at issue in the lawsuit.
The court’s ruling makes it quite evident that consent from the rights holders and payment of suitable compensation are necessary for the use of copyrighted content on the ChatGPT artificial intelligence platform. The court further held that because OpenAI is neither a research institution and the EU Copyright Directive’s text and data mining exception does not apply to the creation or storage of protected songs, it cannot assign blame to individual users or invoke the exception.
A plea to refer the matter to the EU Court of Justice was also denied by the court, which declared that copyright infringement was evident. OpenAI is required by the ruling to delete the protected content from its servers.
The internet is not a self-service store, and human creative achievements are not free templates. 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. – GEMA CEO Tobias Holzmueller
We disagree with the ruling and are considering next steps. 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. – OpenAI spokesperson
