On Thursday, music publishers got a small win in a copyright fight alleging that Anthropic's Claude chatbot regurgitates song lyrics without paying licensing fees to rights holders.
In an order, US district judge Eumi Lee outlined the terms of a deal reached between Anthropic and publisher plaintiffs who license some of the most popular songs on the planet, which she said resolves one aspect of the dispute.
Through the deal, Anthropic admitted no wrongdoing and agreed to maintain its current strong guardrails on its AI models and products throughout the litigation. These guardrails, Anthropic has repeatedly claimed in court filings, effectively work to prevent outputs containing actual song lyrics to hits like Beyonce's "Halo," Spice Girls' "Wannabe," Bob Dylan's "Like a Rolling Stone," or any of the 500 songs at the center of the suit.
