The International Confederation of Music Publishers (ICMP) has initiated an investigation into the alleged unauthorized use of copyright-protected music by various artificial intelligence companies. The probe, conducted over two years, has reportedly uncovered evidence suggesting that AI firms are training their models using copyrighted musical works without obtaining proper licenses.
ICMP’s investigation leveraged diverse sources, including public registries, open-source training repositories, leaked materials, and research from AI specialists. The findings indicate that AI models are being trained on songs by prominent artists such as The Beatles, Beyoncé, The Weeknd, Gorillaz, and Kanye West. The ICMP alleges this usage occurs “without a license.”
The investigation has implicated several AI tools in the alleged infringement. These include Google’s Gemini, Anthropic’s Claude, Microsoft’s CoPilot, and Meta’s Llama 3. ICMP claims that these and other AI tools have “scraped” music from platforms, notably YouTube, to train their AI models.
ICMP Director John Phelan, in a statement to Billboard, described the situation as “the largest IP theft in human history,” adding, “That’s not hyperbole. We are seeing tens of millions of works being infringed daily.” Phelan asserted that the evidence of copyright infringement is extensive and compelling. “We have extensive evidence of serious copyright infringement,” he stated. “Many of these companies are scraping the lyric datasets from the internet of millions of works and putting them into their models.”
Phelan further explained that “tens of millions of musical works” are being accessed by these firms, which he characterized as “a direct breach” of existing copyright laws and regulations. The ICMP also identified X’s AI chatbot Grok as a significant offender, alleging that it copies and distributes copyrighted lyrics. The organization claims the Elon Musk-owned platform is one of the “worst offenders.” The complete findings of the ICMP investigation are accessible through Billboard.
