From GEMA’s press release:
On November 13, 2024, GEMA therefore filed a lawsuit with the Munich Regional Court to enforce its members’ claims against the American parent company, OpenAI, LLC, and against OpenAI Ireland Ltd., the chatbot’s operator in Europe. The lawsuit‘s subject is the chatbot’s unlicensed reproduction of song lyrics. When simple prompts are entered, the chatbot reproduces the original song lyrics with which the system has obviously been trained.
While other internet services pay licensing fees to authors for using their texts, OpenAI systematically makes use of the authors’ content, deliberately infringing copyrights. Fair remuneration is circumvented.
Dr. Tobias Holzmüller, CEO of GEMA, says, “Our members‘ songs are not free raw material for generative AI systems providers‘ business models. Anyone who wants to use these songs must acquire a license and remunerate the authors fairly. We have developed a license model for this. We are taking and will always take legal action against unlicensed use.”
“Our members‘ songs are not free raw material for generative AI systems providers‘ business models. Anyone who wants to use these songs must acquire a license and remunerate the authors fairly.” – Dr. Tobias Holzmüller, CEO of GEMA
Numerous well-known German music artists, including Kristina Bach (“Atemlos”), Rolf Zuckowski, Reinhard Mey, Inga Humpe, Thomas Eckert, Ulf Sommer and Peter Plate, as well as their music publishers, support GEMA’s lawsuit. Their song lyrics have demonstrably been exploited by the chatbot without remuneration.
GEMA has a dedicated page for the litigation.