OpenAI's ChatGPT was found by a German court to have violated copyright laws by using protected lyrics from nine German songs to train its language models without permission.
In November 2024, the Munich regional court ruled that OpenAI's ChatGPT violated German copyright laws by reproducing lyrics from songs by popular German musicians including Herbert Groenemeyer's hits 'Maenner' and 'Bochum' and Helene Fischer's 'Atemlos Durch die Nacht'. The case was brought by GEMA, Germany's music rights society representing approximately 100,000 composers, lyricists and publishers. The court found that OpenAI had trained its AI on protected content from nine German songs without permission. OpenAI argued that its language models did not store or copy specific training data but reflected what they learned from entire datasets, and that users making prompts should be liable rather than OpenAI. However, the court ruled that both the memorization in language models and reproduction of song lyrics in chatbot outputs constitute copyright infringement. The presiding judge ordered OpenAI to pay undisclosed damages for using copyrighted material without authorization. GEMA described this as the first landmark AI ruling in Europe that could set precedent for how AI companies use copyrighted materials. OpenAI disagreed with the ruling and stated they are considering an appeal. The decision affects a limited set of lyrics and does not impact the millions of users in Germany according to OpenAI's spokesperson.
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