ChatGPT Reportedly Found to Reproduce Protected German Lyrics in Copyright Case

November 11, 2025

A Munich court ruled that ChatGPT, an AI model by OpenAI, reproduced protected German song lyrics without authorization. The court found memorization of nine songs and lyric output to infringe exploitation rights. OpenAI disputes the ruling, but damages were ordered. This incident highlights the importance of trustworthy AI governance and the need for safeguards in AI training on copyrighted works.

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Matched TAIM controls

Suggested mapping from embedding similarity (not a formal assessment). Browse all TAIM controls

MAP 4.1 — similarity 0.630, rank 1. TAIM detail and related incidents →
MEASURE 2.10 — similarity 0.625, rank 2. TAIM detail and related incidents →
MAP 1.6 — similarity 0.622, rank 3. TAIM detail and related incidents →

Alleged deployer: openai
Alleged developer: openai
Alleged harmed parties: songwriters, publishers, musicians, herbert-gronemeyer, german-songwriters, german-publishers, german-musicians, german-artists, gema, artists

Source

Data from the AI Incident Database (AIID). Cite this incident: https://incidentdatabase.ai/cite/1278

Data source

Incident data is from the AI Incident Database (AIID).

When citing the database as a whole, please use:

McGregor, S. (2021) Preventing Repeated Real World AI Failures by Cataloging Incidents: The AI Incident Database. In Proceedings of the Thirty-Third Annual Conference on Innovative Applications of Artificial Intelligence (IAAI-21). Virtual Conference.

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