On Friday, the Regional Court of Munich I largely ruled in favor of the German music rights organization Gema in a lawsuit filed against a developer of a program that creates music using Artificial Intelligence (AI). Gema, which acts as a trustee for musical creators, had accused the AI company of illegally using copyrighted musical works, thereby committing copyright infringement. The court has determined that the AI company must obtain Gema’s consent. It is important to note that this verdict is not yet legally binding.
Experts predict that this ruling could have far-reaching implications beyond the specifics of this single case. Training AI models requires enormous amounts of data, which the models use to derive patterns and generate new content. Many AI companies have initially utilized parts of their training data without compensating the rights holders, arguing under the U.S. Fair Use doctrine that this constitutes a transformative use.
