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The Guardian - UK
The Guardian - UK
Technology
Deborah Cole in Berlin and Philip Oltermann, European culture editor

ChatGPT violated copyright law by ‘learning’ from song lyrics, German court rules

OpenAI ChatGPT United States GEMA Munich
Old photo of Herbert Grönemeyer singing into a microphone
Songs used by ChatGPT included Herbert Grönemeyer’s 1984 synth-pop sendup of masculinity, ‘Männer’ (Men). Photograph: Ullstein Bild/Getty Images

A court in Munich has ruled that OpenAI’s chatbot ChatGPT violated German copyright laws by using hits from top-selling musicians to train its language models in what creative industry advocates described as a landmark European ruling.

The Munich regional court sided in favour of Germany’s music rights society GEMA, which said ChatGPT had harvested protected lyrics by popular artists to “learn” from them.

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