GEMA sues OpenAI for unlicensed use of song lyrics in ChatGPT training
German music rights collection society GEMA filed a lawsuit in Munich Regional Court on November 13, 2024, alleging that OpenAI trained ChatGPT on copyrighted song lyrics from its 95,000 members without licenses or compensation. GEMA claims the chatbot reproduces protected lyrics and seeks to establish that OpenAI systematically used the repertoire for training purposes.
What happened
GEMA, a German collection society representing around 95,000 composers, lyricists, and music publishers as well as over two million rightsholders worldwide, filed a lawsuit against OpenAI on November 13, 2024 at Munich Regional Court alleging that ChatGPT was trained on copyrighted song lyrics without licenses or payment to authors.
GEMA claims that when simple prompts are entered, ChatGPT reproduces original song lyrics, demonstrating the system was trained on protected works from GEMA's repertoire. The lawsuit targets both the US parent company OpenAI, LLC and OpenAI Ireland Ltd., the company's operator in Europe.
Reported impact
GEMA alleges that song lyrics from numerous German music artists including Kristina Bach, Rolf Zuckowski, Reinhard Mey, Inga Humpe, Thomas Eckert, Ulf Sommer and Peter Plate have been exploited by the chatbot without remuneration, circumventing fair payment to authors.
GEMA states that while other internet services pay licensing fees for using texts, OpenAI systematically uses authors' content and deliberately infringes copyrights without remuneration.
Index analysis
GEMA notes this is the first collecting society worldwide to file a lawsuit against a generative AI provider for unlicensed use of protected musical works. The lawsuit aims to prove that OpenAI systematically uses GEMA's repertoire to train its systems.
The action follows a similar pattern to other music copyright lawsuits filed against AI companies; in 2023, Universal Music Publishing Group, Concord Music Group and ABKCO sued Anthropic alleging Claude unlawfully copies and disseminates vast amounts of copyrighted musical works.
Governance controls
GEMA states it has developed a license model for AI providers to use protected songs and emphasizes that anyone wishing to use these works must acquire licenses and provide fair remuneration to authors.
GEMA's Supervisory Board Chairman stated that human creative achievements must not be used as free templates for AI providers' commercial offerings, and that copyright infringements in chatbot outputs cannot be accepted.
Classification
Sources and evidence
This record was researched and written by the Index, based on the following original reporting.