GEMA sues AI companies

Background

GEMA is the first collecting society in the world (according to its own statement) to bring legal action against providers of AI systems in order to protect the copyrighted musical works of its members that have been used without obtaining a license. 

Lawsuit against Open AI

Back in November 2024, GEMA filed a lawsuit against Open AI as the provider of the AI software ChatGPT (more precisely, against the American parent company and the Irish subsidiary that operates the software in Europe) at the Munich I Regional Court. The allegation is that Open AI used copyrighted texts to train the ChatGPT software. Open AI did not acquire a license for the lyrics of the approximately 95,000 GEMA members, meaning that they did not receive any remuneration for the use of their works. GEMA considers the reproduction of the lyrics by the software to be an unlawful making available to the public of protected works within the meaning of Section 19a of the German Copyright Act (UrhG).

The court's decision will largely depend on the question of whether the training of AI falls under the copyright barrier of Section 44b UrhG for text and data mining and whether the faithful reproduction of the song lyrics by AI is a copyright-relevant use.

Action against Suno Inc.

On January 21, 2020, GEMA filed another lawsuit against Suno Inc, the provider of the AI software Suno AI, at the Munich I Regional Court. With the Suno AI software, its users can create pieces of music by entering so-called prompts, which (according to GEMA's accusation) are confusingly similar to the original songs. Here too, the AI company had systematically used the musical works for training purposes without involving the authors in the commercial exploitation. 

Even with these rulings, one can hope for further clarification of the legal limits and possibilities for AI software.