**German Court Rules OpenAI Violated Copyright Law Through ChatGPT**
A German court has found OpenAI in violation of copyright law due to its ChatGPT chatbot program. Specifically, OpenAI’s generative AI services were found to have illegally reproduced the lyrics of several popular German artists in its content.
The ruling, reported by Reuters earlier this week, comes after the German music rights society GEMA filed a lawsuit on behalf of multiple musicians. Among the artists affected was best-selling musician Herbert Groenemeyer, whose singles “Maenner” and “Bochum” were cited as part of nine songs involved in the case.
Judge Elke Schwager ruled in favor of GEMA, concluding that OpenAI had infringed on several copyright laws by using protected material without permission to train its ChatGPT language models. As a result, OpenAI has been ordered to pay damages to the copyright holders, though the exact amount has not been disclosed.
This legal decision adds to a growing list of challenges faced by OpenAI regarding its generative AI technologies. For instance, the company’s Sora 2 video generation tool has attracted multiple complaints and threats of lawsuits from prominent organizations such as the Motion Picture Association, SAG-AFTRA, and Japan’s CODA group.
In its defense, OpenAI argued that its language models do not store training data directly but sometimes generate outputs that resemble source materials. However, the court determined that the similarities in the outputs were too close and amounted to copyright infringement.
This case highlights the increasing legal scrutiny surrounding AI-generated content and the use of copyrighted materials in training AI systems. OpenAI will likely need to address these challenges as it continues to develop and deploy its generative AI services.
https://www.shacknews.com/article/146798/openai-chatgpt-german-music-copyright-lawsuit
