AI tech companies accused of illegally scraping copyrighted music in ICMP investigation

Some of the world’s leading AI tech companies have been accused of illegally scraping copyrighted music in an investigation carried out by the International Confederation of Music Publishers (ICMP).

Google, Microsoft, Meta, Open AI and X have all been named in evidence collected and shared with Billboard that spans two years’ worth of collection using public registries, open-source repositories of training content, leaked materials and research from AI experts.

The results allege that songs by high-profile artists such as Mariah Carey, Kanye West, The Weeknd, Beyoncé and Bob Dylan have been used for AI training purposes “without a licence”.

The ICMP investigation claims that AI tools such as Google’s Gemini, Anthropic’s Claude, Microsoft’s CoPilot, Meta’s Llama 3, and more have all “scraped” music from licensed platforms such as YouTube and Spotify to train their models “without permission nor respect for laws”.

According to enquiries led by ICMP during their investigation, OpenAI’s chatbot allegedly admitted that the OpenAI Jukebox music-making app was trained on copyright-protected music “by a wide range of artists”, including Drake and Beyoncé.

In a statement to Billboard, ICMP Director John Phelan said: “This is the largest IP theft in human history. That’s not hyperbole. We are seeing tens of millions of works being infringed daily.

He added: “Despite their public claims that they’re not training upon copyright-protected works, we’ve caught many of them [tech companies] red-handed”, alleging they have “extensive evidence” of “serious copyright infringement”.

Read the full Billboard investigation and interview here.

The use of AI in music and its copyright implications continue to spark debate across the music industry. In May, SoundCloud came forward with a statement clarifying has “never used artist content to train AI models”, following backlash against the company over an update to its Terms of Service.

Earlier this year, composer Max Richter joined a chorus of artists calling for regulation of AI, telling MPs that training AI systems on copyrighted music “unfair and unworkable” for artists.