GEMA vs OpenAI: the ruling that may reshape how AI uses copyrighted works

Gianpaolo Todisco - Partner

The relationship between artificial intelligence and copyright law has become a central topic of global debate. Yet until recently, European courts had never taken a clear position on one fundamental question: Can AI platforms freely use copyrighted works to train their models?

With the recent ruling by the Munich Regional Court in the case of GEMA v. OpenAI, that question has finally been answered—and not in the way the big tech companies had hoped.

The lawsuit began after GEMA, Germany’s leading music rights management organization, accused OpenAI of using thousands of copyrighted song lyrics to train its models without obtaining any authorization. The issue does not concern the outputs generated by the AI, but rather the most fundamental stage of the process: the training phase. Like many other companies in the sector, OpenAI has long argued that this phase is purely technical and therefore falls outside the traditional scope of copyright law. For years, this position benefited from a certain degree of tolerance, largely because the technology was new, complex, and difficult to regulate.

The German court has now decisively overturned this paradigm. The ruling states that training a language model is, in fact, an act of reproduction of the work, and therefore falls squarely within the author’s exclusive rights. The fact that the operation is carried out by an algorithm, automatically and on a massive scale, does not alter the legal nature of the activity. If a text is copied, stored, analyzed, or processed within a dataset, such use requires authorization.

The court went further, clarifying that the European exceptions regarding text and data mining do not apply in this case. The EU DSM Directive permits certain data-analysis activities, particularly for scientific research and, in some cases, for commercial purposes—but only if the author has not expressly reserved their rights. Many of the lyrics represented by GEMA did contain such a reservation. According to the court, OpenAI should have been aware of this and obtained the necessary licenses.

This decision is likely to mark a turning point. For years, AI models have been trained using enormous amounts of data sourced from the internet, often without distinguishing between free content and protected content. This practice was largely justified by the technical complexity of machine learning systems and the lack of clear regulations. Today, however, that gap is beginning to close, and the Munich ruling leaves little room for flexible interpretations: using copyrighted works requires a license, just as any other reproduction would.

The potential consequences for the industry are significant. Large companies may now be required to negotiate massive licensing agreements with national and international collecting societies, opening the door to an entirely new market for “AI royalties.” At the same time, far greater transparency will likely be required regarding the datasets used for training—an area that has traditionally remained opaque. In the future, platforms may be required to disclose which works were used, under which licenses, and with what limitations.

For authors and publishers, this is clearly a significant victory. For the first time, a court has recognized that the value of creative works does not end with their public consumption but continues even in the context of AI training. This may open up opportunities for new forms of compensation and for greater control over the use of creative content in the digital world.

The GEMA v. OpenAI case also comes at a time when various European courts are examining similar issues and when the Court of Justice of the European Union is expected to address related questions soon. It is increasingly clear that we are entering a new phase of copyright law, one in which the very concept of “reproduction” will need to be reexamined through the lens of machine learning technologies.

One thing, however, is already certain: the era in which AI systems could be trained freely on any content available online is over. The Munich court’s decision places copyright law at the heart of AI development. From now on, those who wish to build increasingly powerful models will have to engage with authors, publishers, and collecting societies. It is no longer just a technical matter—it is a legal, economic, and cultural issue that will define how human creativity interacts with artificial creativity.