**German Court Finds OpenAI’s ChatGPT in Violation of Copyright Law Over Song Lyrics**
A German court has ruled that OpenAI violated copyright laws through its ChatGPT chatbot program by reproducing the lyrics of popular German artists without permission. The decision marks another significant legal challenge for OpenAI’s generative AI services.
The ruling, reported by Reuters earlier this week, came after the German music rights society GEMA filed a lawsuit representing several musicians whose works were allegedly used illegally to train OpenAI’s language models. Among the artists affected is best-selling musician Herbert Groenemeyer, whose singles “Maenner” and “Bochum” were named among nine songs included in the legal action.
Judge Elke Schwager found OpenAI in breach of several copyright laws and ordered the company to pay an undisclosed amount in damages to the copyright holders. While OpenAI argued that its models do not store training data verbatim but sometimes generate content resembling source materials, the court ruled that the outputs were too similar and constituted copyright infringement.
This case adds to ongoing legal scrutiny faced by OpenAI’s generative AI tools. The company’s Sora 2 video generation platform has also attracted complaints and threats of litigation from industry groups such as the Motion Picture Association, SAG-AFTRA, and Japan’s CODA group.
As generative AI continues to evolve, the balance between innovation and intellectual property rights remains a critical issue — one clearly highlighted by this latest ruling against OpenAI in Germany.
https://www.shacknews.com/article/146798/openai-chatgpt-german-music-copyright-lawsuit
