Overview
- The Regional Court of Munich I found that OpenAI infringed German copyright by using nine song texts to train ChatGPT.
- OpenAI must stop storing or outputting the specific lyrics, pay damages, and disclose how the works were used and any related revenues.
- Judges held that both memorization within the models and near‑verbatim outputs constituted unlawful exploitation, rejecting OpenAI’s synthesis defense.
- The judgment is not final, and OpenAI said it disagrees and will consider further steps, with an appeal and possible referral to the European Court of Justice expected.
- A personality‑rights claim by GEMA was rejected, while legal experts and creator groups say the case could set terms for licensing across music, journalism, literature and visual media.