Two new high profile AI copyright infringement lawsuits filed this week as Google seeks to dismiss another

In today's Portfolio Intelligence Daily, where we highlight under the radar investment themes and idiosyncratic company risks:

• Music publishers sue AI startup alleging infringement
• Authors sue Meta, Microsoft, Bloomberg for AI copyright infringement
• Google seeks to dismiss AI copyright lawsuit

Auquan’s analyst team curates these summaries from our intelligence engine, which uses retrieval augmented generation (RAG AI) to uncover unique insights at scale, typically involving emerging markets, supply chains, financially-material ESG risks, and the impact of regulatory changes.

Music publishers sue AI startup alleging infringement

Universal Music Group (UMG), ABKCO, and Concord Publishing have filed a copyright infringement lawsuit against AI startup Anthropic claiming its chatbot, Claude, is unlawfully using lyrics without permission.

• The lawsuit claims that one of the methods used by the Claude bot is specific and literal. For example, if a user asks for lyrics to certain songs, the chatbot will respond with lyrics that either include all or a substantial part of those requested songs.
• In some instances, Anthropic's AI models unintentionally produce output that includes publishers' lyrics, even without being prompted to do so. These outputs often closely resemble existing songs.
• Last month, Amazon invested $4 billion in Anthropic for a minority stake in the company. Google and Zoom are also among the high-profile tech giants that have backed Anthropic.
• UMG has been aggressive in taking legal action against AI companies.?

Select timeline

• 10/19/23 | Universal Music Group is suing Amazon-backed AI startup Anthropic (Quartz)
• 10/19/23 | Universal Music sues AI company Anthropic for distributing song lyrics (The Verge)
• 10/18/23 | Music publishers sue AI company Anthropic over song lyrics (Reuters)

Authors sue Meta, Microsoft, Bloomberg for AI copyright infringement

A lawsuit has been filed in New York federal court by a group of writers accusing Meta, Microsoft, and Bloomberg of using their work without permission to train artificial intelligence systems.

• Plaintiffs include former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee and best-selling Christian author Lysa TerKeurst.
• The class-action copyright lawsuit claims that the companies utilized the "Books3" dataset, which includes numerous pirated books, to train their large language models in generating responses to human prompts.

"Too many companies have been advancing artificial intelligence systems and large language models by all means necessary—including theft of our authors' books. We're not opposed to innovation; we're opposed to the theft behind the innovation.” — plaintiff’s attorneys (source)

Select timeline

• 10/18/23 | Authors sue Meta, Microsoft, Bloomberg in latest AI copyright clash (Reuters)
• 10/18/23 | Mike Huckabee joins authors suing Microsoft, Meta over AI copyright (The Washington Post)
• 10/18/23 |? Meta, Bloomberg, Microsoft Face IP Suit Over AI Data (Law360)

Google seeks to dismiss AI copyright lawsuit

Google wants to dismiss a lawsuit filed against the company over copyright infringement related to datta used to train AI models.?

• The lawsuit was filed against Google in July, alleging that their AI training procedures involve stealing content from millions of Americans to feed its AI models, which is seen as theft.
• Google argues that they have not done anything wrong and that the lawsuit harms the generative AI field.?
• The fight highlights a heated debate in the AI field about who owns the internet and its vast amount of content?

Select timeline

• 10/19/23 |? Google Angling for Dismissal in AI Suit Accusing it of Stealing Data (Fashion Law)
• 10/18/23 | Google Terrified of Lawsuit That Would "Take a Sledgehammer" to Generative AI (Yahoo News)
• 10/18/23 |? Google requests dismissal of AI data scraping class-action suit (Cointelegraph)

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