NASHVILLE, Tenn.—On Friday, NetChoice filed an amicus brief with Chamber of Progress supporting the artificial intelligence company, Anthropic, in a copyright suit against them in the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Tennessee, Concord Music Group et al. v. Anthropic.
In October 2023, a group of music publishers filed a copyright lawsuit against Anthropic, accusing it of misusing copyrighted song lyrics to train its generative AI system, Claude, to respond to human prompts.
Claude is both an AI chatbot and the name for the underlying “large language model” (LLM) that powers it. Developers train LLMs on massive, diverse datasets of human-created materials, including song lyrics, to teach them the statistical relationships between words. This process enables Clause to have text-based conversations with users and to excel in tasks like summarization, editing, code-writing, and more.
The music publisher plaintiffs, Concord Music group et al., moved to preliminarily enjoin Anthropic’s operations, which would effectively stop the Claude LLM from being available to the public in its current form.
NetChoice’s amicus brief with Chamber of Progress in this case asks the Court to deny the motion for preliminary injunction against Anthropic’s operations.
“Generative Al systems enable creative reuses of the data embodied in copyrighted works—not the copyrighted expression itself. A hasty ruling that forbids training LLMs on particular categories of data will jeopardize the development of AI models across a variety of valuable, creative use-cases,” said Nicole Saad Bembridge, Associate Director of the NetChoice Litigation Center. “We urge the court to preserve breathing space for AI innovation while this copyright litigation is pending.”
Our brief emphasizes 3 key points:
- The public has growing interest in the continued development of generative AI tools. From enhancing productivity to advancing scientific and medical research, systems like Claude are poised to revolutionize the way we all work and live.
- The plaintiffs’ demand for a preliminary injunction depends upon cutting-edge legal questions about the application of copyright law to generative AI. These unresolved issues are currently being litigated in many other cases around the country — all making their way through fact and expert discovery and toward summary judgment or trial.
- These questions are best resolved in that posture: on a complete record, with the benefit of full factual development and expert testimony—not in a preemptive posture.
We urge the Court not to short-circuit the development of this incredible AI technology.
You can read NetChoice’s full amicus brief with Chamber of Progress here.
Please contact press@netchoice.org with inquiries.