In the latest face-off between AI and intellectual property, a coalition of music recording and publishing companies has sued young AI company Anthropic for $75 million.

The plaintiff group includes ABKCO, Concord Music Group, Worship Together Music, and Universal Music Group, the recording label for artists including Taylor Swift, Elton John, and Lady Gaga.

The companies allege that Anthropic trained its AI named Claude, in part, by using songs from their artists without asking or obtaining permission, thereby committing “systematic and widespread infringement” of copyright laws.

In addition to $75 million in damages, the companies have demanded a jury trial, reimbursement for their legal expenses, the removal from Claude of all purloined material, a public explanation of how the AI was trained, and penalties of up to $150,000 for each infringed work.

This is the first organized legal strike against AI by the music industry. Individual artists have already sued OpenAI and other developers.

TRENDPOST: Courts and juries will rule on each of the stack of individual cases of AI, copyright, and intellectual property that are piling up. That will create a hodgepodge of case law that could easily vary from one jurisdiction to another, especially among countries.

Through a long process, the jumble of case law will be shuffled into a code of regulations and, ultimately, internationally binding agreements. However, that will be a long process.

In the meantime, chaos and uncertainty will prevail. Large and well-funded developers such as Google and OpenAI will use their wealth to fight and ultimately settle the most difficult individual cases.