Nov 11th, 2025:

OpenAI has been found to have violated German copyright laws designed to protect original works and prevent unauthorised reproduction, distribution, or adaptation of copyrighted material.

The court in Munich ruled that OpenAI trained ChatGPT on protected content from at least nine German songs.

In court, GEMA proved that copyrighted content is trivially reproduced and made available by OpenAI's ChatGPT in exact copies or with minor alterations.

In November 2024, GEMA filed the lawsuit against OpenAI, alleging that the company systematically utilises copyrighted material without providing compensation.

OpenAI's position that it qualifies as a privileged research organisation was rejected by the court.

A licensing model for AI had been offered to OpenAI by the collecting society in September 2024, which was rejected.

The ruling represents the first time that a European court has formally examined and ruled in favour of copyright holders against AI.

GEMA has also filed a lawsuit against AI music generator Suno, with a hearing scheduled for 26 January 2026.

Suno's AI tool, it is claimed by the organisation, was trained on original recordings from GEMA's portfolio.

GEMA is one of the five biggest PROs in the world.

 

This is a great victory for musicians and music professionals!

Every time someone uses your music or lyrics, provided it is registered with GEMA, they have to pay and GEMA ensures that the copyright holders, i.e. the musicians, get their money.

 

It's called GEMA. Not PRO GEMA. The latter is a fertilizer manufacturer.

 

Gesellschaft für musikalische Aufführungs- und mechanische Vervielfältigungsrechte (GEMA) www.gema.de/de
Society for Musical Performing and Mechanical Reproduction Rights (GEMA) www.gema.de/en

 

I remember how Sam Altman said that regulating AI and enforcing copyright laws would be bad as it would "slow down innovation" and make them lose the AI technology race to countries like China. In other words, Sam Altman is 100% aware that his company violates copyright and intellectual property laws. But we live in a tech oligarchy now, so instead of regulation, they received 500 Billion in funding and were probably given the ok to scrape any and all data they want. Fucking disgusting.

This lost lawsuit is just a slap on the wrist for a project with this much funding.

 

PRO = Performance rights organisation. Not a name or part of the name

 

Thanks for the explanation. GEMA is the german administration that mainly manages copyrights. It collects license fees from broadcasting stations, event organizers, cinemas, labels, web portals and even sellers of electronic storage devices (tbc...) for the usage of registered works.
The german performance rights organisation is called Gesellschaft zur Verwertung von Leistungsschutzrechten (GVL).

 

I hadn't heard of GVL before, interesting!

The industry/(English) Wikipedia calls GEMA a PRO (first sentence).

If I'm understanding GVL's role correctly, then GVL licenses the actual execution of the work (drumming, vocals, .. on a record), while GEMA licenses the abstract execution of the work (lyrics, composition, .. on a sheet of paper).

Typically, GEMA takes over collection duties for both and GEMA then pays GVL accordingly, both then individually pay artists.

 

Last edited: Nov 12, 2025 at 9:33 PM

I hope this news start chain-events to ruin that shitty suno and wannabe beatmakers with it.

 

The nerve to say this is unhinged

Good news too. As much as I like its results technically... I could tell which singer was mainly trained by in some songs.