OpenAI used song lyrics in violation of copyright laws, German court says

OpenAI’s chatbot ChatGPT violated German copyright laws by reproducing lyrics from songs by best-selling musician Herbert Groenemeyer and others, a court ruled on Tuesday, in a closely watched case against the U.S. firm over its use of lyrics to train its language models.

The regional court in Munich found that the company trained its AI on protected content from nine German songs, including Groenemeyer’s hits “Maenner” and “Bochum”.

The case was brought by German music rights society GEMA, whose members include composers, lyricists and publishers, in…