It’s a worrying week for America’s new class of AI superpowers.
No doubt you’re already up to speed on DeepSeek, the Chinese generative AI platform that seems to be able to do most of everything ChatGPT can… but purportedly only cost USD $5.6 million to build.
Owned by Chinese hedge fund High-Flyer, DeepSeek has Silicon Valley in a flap. The question on every monied tech bro’s lips: if China can make something this good for a few million dollars, why have we already invested tens of billions in the US’s leading AI companies?
One of the most notable AI companies in the US, of course, is Anthropic, home to the highly sophisticated chatbot (and ChatGPT/DeepSeek rival), Claude.
To date, Anthropic has raised a stunning USD $10.8 billion, with $8 billion of that figure coming from Amazon, and a further $1 billion coming from Google.
Last week, Bloomberg reported that Lightspeed Partners — a backer of notorious AI music maker Suno — had “effectively done” a deal (as yet publicly unconfirmed) to plunge a further $2 billion into Anthropic.
Bloomberg says this Lightspeed-led investment will give Anthropic a valuation of USD $60 billion — around the same worth as the current combined market cap of Universal Music Group and Warner Music Group.
Quite what the emergence of DeepSeek does to that mooted $60 billion valuation (and Lightspeed’s mooted investment) remains to be seen.
In the meantime, Anthropic has a fight on its hands.
In one of several landmark ‘copyright owner vs. generative AI giant’ lawsuits, Universal Music Group is gunning for Anthropic’s billions of dollars of sweet coin.
A lawsuit from UMG (plus Concord and ABKCO), launched in 2023 and seeking at least $75 million in damages, alleges that Claude has been illegally trained on the copyrighted lyrics of hundreds of songs.
UMPG and its fellow plaintiffs have presented as evidence an array of instances in which Claude was caught, when prompted, regurgitating the lyrics of classic (and copyrighted) songs, including A Change Is Gonna Come, God Only Knows, What a Wonderful World, Gimme Shelter, American Pie, and Sweet Home Alabama.
Earlier this month, that lawsuit reached a milestone moment, when Anthropic agreed to implement so-called “guardrails” around copyrighted material represented by UMG, Concord, and ABKCO.
Although these “guardrails” didn’t end the lawsuit — UMG still wants those damages, after all — they did see Anthropic promise that Claude would no longer regurgitate the lyrics to songs represented by the plaintiffs.
How well are these “guardrails” working today?
MBW just put them to the test – by trying to tempt Claude into repeating some copyrighted lyrics from the Lennon/McCartney slice of genius that is Paperback Writer.
Below, you can see the results of our quick, prompt-led experiment.
Conclusion: The chatbot held fast, even responding to our pestering with the firm statement, “I should actually avoid directly quoting specific lyrics from the song to respect copyright…”.
Then again, it seemed pretty clear to us that Paperback Writer’s lyrics remain within Claude’s ‘brain’ (and/or its LLM), as proven by its repeated ability to reference specific themes and words in the song.
Watch out for a fun bit at the end, whereby Claude makes a cheeky reference to Universal Music Group having “certainly become known for being quite protective of their music rights”.
Bold!
Music Business Worldwide