A Munich court has ruled that OpenAI infringed German copyright law by reproducing protected song lyrics in its ChatGPT chatbot. Jörn Poltz reports for Reuters.
The regional court found that OpenAI trained its AI models on copyrighted content from nine German songs, including hits by best-selling musician Herbert Groenemeyer. The case was brought by GEMA, a German music rights society representing composers, lyricists and publishers.
OpenAI had argued that its language models do not store specific training data and that users, not the company, should be liable for generated outputs. The court rejected this defense, ruling that both the memorization of lyrics in the models and their reproduction in outputs constitute copyright infringement.
The court ordered OpenAI to pay unspecified damages. The company says it disagrees with the ruling and is considering next steps. The decision, which can be appealed, may set a precedent for how AI companies use copyrighted materials across Europe.
