Artificial intelligence – AI – uses computers to create systems that tend to “disrupt” the existing copyrights of the creators of the written, visual, or audio works.

The threat to written works was discussed in my article “AI and Copyrighted Written Works,” SBCurrent March 24, 2026.

The threat to visual works was discussed in my article “AI and Copyrighted Visual Works,” SBCurrent April 17, 2026.

Audio

Audio works include the copyrights of musicians and record labels.

Santa Barbara has an active musical scene including:

The Music Academy of the West was founded in 1947 by Southern California arts patrons, musicians, conductors, and composers.

The Granada Theatre opened in 1924 as a Grand Movie Palace and Live Performance Venue.

The Lobero Theatre was established in 1873 and is renowned for its historic charm and intimate ambiance as well as for delivering top-notch programs within a welcoming atmosphere.

SOhO Restaurant and Music Club hosts events and concerts almost every day of the week featuring all kinds of music.

The Funk Zone offers a variety of venues featuring music, such as the Carr Winery.

And, let’s not forget the 4,562-seat Santa Barbara Bowl, a Depression-era Works Progress Administration (WPA) amphitheatre built in 1936 that regularly features world-famous musical acts in a stunning outdoors venue.

The quirky but elegant Arlington Theatre too has presented many musical performances over the years.

Copyright

The U.S. Copyright Act of 1976 grants authors of original works some exclusive rights, such as preventing others from reproducing their works.

The Supreme Court in Twentieth Century Music Corp. v Allen, 422 U.S. 151 (1975) held that the goal of copyright laws is to promote the “broad public availability of literature, music and the other arts.”

However, only creative works are entitled to copyright protection. To be creative a work must have a “spark” and a “modicum” of creativity.

Things that do not qualify include titles, names, short phrases, lettering, and a listing of ingredients or contents.

The law provides that “the fair use of a copyrighted work…for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching… scholarship, or research, is not an infringement of copyright.”

Artists proving a violation of their copyrights must prove these four factors:

1) The purpose and character of the use including whether such use is of a commercial nature,

2) The nature of the copyrighted work,

3) The amount and substantiality of the portioned used,

4) The effect of the use upon the potential market for the value of the copyrighted work.

Proof of the last criterion (number 4) can be tricky as it requires the creator to prove what the value of their work would have been if the defendant had not violated their copyright.

Court Cases

There have not been any court rulings although some of the cases have been settled.

For example, Universal Music Group (UMG) settled the case of UMG recording, Inc. v Suno, (D. Mass. Filed June 24, 2024) by entering into a licensing agreement for UMG’s recorded music and publishing catalogues while working on launching a new subscription service.

Warner Music Group also announced a settlement with Suno that “artist and songwriters will have full control over whether and how their names, images, likeness, voices, and compositions, are used in new Ai-generated music.”

The case Concord Music Group, Inc. v. Anthropic PBC, U.S. District Court for the Northern ⁠District of ​California, No. 5:24-cv-03811 has the potential to establish a precedence.

The music publishers sued Anthropic in 2023 for allegedly infringing on their copyrights in lyrics from hundreds of songs by musicians including Beyonce, the Rolling Stones and the Beach Boys.

Musicians of this calibre not only have the funds to continue to pursue this case but also have sufficient successes to be able to prove what the potential market was for their work if the defendant had not violated their copyrights.

This case may well set the precedence on when, and if, AI systems qualify for the “fair use” exception to copyrighted material

Anthropic asserts that Claude, their AI system, is “the ​kind of new idea ⁠that the Copyright Act not only allows, but encourages.”

“Allowing copyright holders to veto such a transformative technology would ignore the Supreme Court’s mandate that the primary objective of copyright ​is not to reward the author, but to serve the public,” Anthropic says.

Anthropic has ​asked U.S. District ⁠Judge Eumi Lee, appointed by President Biden, for summary judgment, a ruling that the company is entitled to win the case based on fair use without a jury trial.

In the motion, filed in April 2026, Anthropic argued that its AI training made “transformative” use of lyrics ​to “help Claude understand human language and enable progress and productivity in science, business and ⁠education.”

The publishers have asserted that Anthropic’s AI training was not fair use because Claude generates derivatives of their lyrics ​that “compete with and dilute the market” for them and that Anthropic’s AI outputted near-verbatim lyrics, constituting direct, contributory, and vicarious infringement, and had intentionally removed Copyright management Information (CMI).

Conclusion

The Concord Music Group v Anthropic case may offer guidance on how the courts will apply the copyright laws and the fair use doctrine of the copyright law. The financial strength, and amounts involved, indicate that without a settlement there probably will be appeals.

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AI, or Artificial intelligence, is a new technology that uses computers to create systems capable of performing tasks typically requiring human intelligence.

New technologies tend to be “disruptors” by permitting the users of computers to “disrupt” the existing rights of the creators of the written, visual or audio works.

The threat of AI disrupting the r…

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Artificial Intelligence, or just “AI,” is a new technology. New technologies tend to be “disruptors” by increasing the powers of the users to “disrupt” the existing rights of others. Lawyers and sometimes courts of law must apply existing laws in order to try and balance the rights of both of those groups.

This Occurred in the 1990s

In the 1990s, the new technology of personal computers provided employees with the power to electronically carry their employer’s intellectual property off the employer’s facility.

This disrupted the effectiveness of employers protecting their proprietary information by inspecting the belongings, such as briefcases and vehicles, of employees before they exited the employer’s facilities.

For example, when asked about the risks of permitting an accountant to work from home, I responded that it was permitting the employee to electronically remove the employer’s proprietary information by sending it off site to their personal computer which may not be as secure as the corporate system that deflected hundreds of attempts by hackers every week.

Today

The new technology Is AI, a branch of computer science that creates systems capable of performing tasks typically requiring human intelligence, such as reasoning, learning, problem-solving, perception, and interpreting input from cameras.

In essence, Ai functions by analyzing the data fed into it in order to identify patterns. In many cases, if not all, the data fed into includes some data that others have copyrighted.

The challenges to the legal system is to find the proper balance between AI being able to use the data without “disrupting” the rights provided authors by copyrights.

Legal Cases

In August 2024, authors Andrea Bartz, Charles Graeber, and Kirk Wallace Johnson filed a class action law suit against AI developer Anthropic alleging that AI developer Anthropic’s unauthorized use of books to train LLMs violated their copyrights.

In 2025 Judge Willaim Alsup, appointed by President Bill Clinton, in Bartz v Anthropic, N. D. Cal 2025, held that the digitization of purchased works was permitted under the “fair use” exception under the Copyright Act.

However, Judge Alsup also certified a class of rights holders whose books were obtained from pirated sources like LibGen (Library Genesis) and PiLiMi (Pirate Library Mirror).

As frequently happens, after a class was certified, Anthropic proposed a $1.5 billion class-action settlement covering approximately 500,000 works.

If this settlement is approved by the courts, it will be two things:

1) One of the largest in copyright history and

2) Provide significant, yet nuanced, guidance for AI companies, confirming that while training on data purchased is often permitted under the fair use doctrine, this may not be true for data from pirated works.

In Kadrey v Meta Platforms, N.D. Cal. 2025, 13 authors filed a class action lawsuit against Meta for downloading their copyrighted books to train its “llama” LLM.

An “LLM” is a “large language model” AI that developers “train” by “feeding” them an immense amount of text which the models use to recognize patterns and analyze the statistical relationship among words and punctuation marks. LLMs then generate new texts by predicting which words are most likely to come next in sequence.

Note: Under the theory of “garbage in, garbage out,” “trainers” can influence the outcomes by the types of text they “feed” to the LLMs. This may be particularly relevant for political issues.

Federal Judge Vince Chhabria, appointed by President Barack Obama, granted summary judgement for Meta by holding that Llama’s use qualified for the “Fair Use” exception to the Copyright Act as it was “transformative,” meaning it was used for scholarship or research.

In the Kadrey case, Judge Chhabria granted summary judgement in favor of Meta based on the plaintiff-authors failing to produce sufficient evidence of the effects of similar works produced by an LLM.

Judge Chhabria either advertently or inadvertently created two problems with his holding:

1) Trying to produce “sufficient evidence of the effects of similar works produced by an LLM” would require introducing evidence of another case that may well be prohibited under federal law, and

2) There are no similar works, as all copyrighted works are unique.

Conclusion

The legal rights of the AI users and the holders of copyrights will continue to develop based on how various judges view particular sets of facts.

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