A German court ruled that OpenAI's ChatGPT violated the country's copyright laws by training its language models on licensed musical works without permission, including several news outlets The Guardian reported.
The ruling followed a lawsuit filed against OpenAI last November by GEMA, a German collective that manages music rights in Germany. The company was ordered to pay an undisclosed amount of damages to GEMA, but said it disagreed with the ruling and was considering “next steps.” GEMA, meanwhile, considered this “the primary groundbreaking AI ruling in Europe”.
“Today we now have created a precedent that protects and clarifies the rights of authors: operators of AI tools like ChatGPT must also adhere to copyright law,” said GEMA Managing Director Tobias Holzmüller, as The Guardian reported. “Today we successfully defended the livelihoods of musicians.”
OpenAI is being sued by other creatives and media groups over the identical issue.
