A regional court in Munich has ruled that OpenAI’s ChatGPT violated German copyright laws by training its language models on protected song lyrics without permission, The Guardian reports. The ruling, described by creative industry advocates as a landmark European decision, sided with Germany’s music rights society, GEMA, which filed the case in November 2024.
The lawsuit was centered on nine popular German hit songs, including Herbert Grönemeyer’s “Männer” and Helene Fischer’s “Atemlos Durch die Nacht.” GEMA, which represents approximately 100,000 composers, lyricists, and music publishers, argued that OpenAI had harvested these protected lyrics for its AI to “learn” from. The court ordered OpenAI to pay undisclosed damages.
During the case, OpenAI argued that its models absorb entire training sets rather than storing or copying specific songs. The company also contended that its users, not the company itself, should be held legally liable for the output generated by their prompts. The court rejected this argument.
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GEMA welcomed the decision as “the first landmark AI ruling in Europe.” Its chief executive, Tobias Holzmüller, stated, “Today, we have set a precedent that protects and clarifies the rights of authors: even operators of AI tools such as ChatGPT must comply with copyright law.” The German Journalists’ Association also hailed the ruling as “a milestone victory for copyright law.”
OpenAI, which has faced similar copyright litigation in the U.S., said in a statement that it “disagrees with the ruling and are considering next steps.” The company noted the decision was for a “limited set of lyrics” and “does not impact the millions of people… in Germany that use our technology every day.”
