The global music industry is fighting back against the use of artists’ work by technology companies to power artificial intelligence.

Companies, including Sony and Universal, have launched a website that will both allow labels to protect their copyright and also warn technology businesses that are trawling their content not to use or distribute their work illegally.

The site, RightsAndAI.com, has been put together by the International Confederation of Music Publishers (ICMP), the global trade body that represents the music publishing industry and covers about 90 per cent of the world’s commercially released music.

“AI is not new for the music industry,” it said. “What is new is the recent wave of AI companies, ranging from huge to small, who continue to illegally access and mine digital music. Such companies break fundamental legal requirements of prior authorisation from rights holders, they deliberately misuse ‘fair use’ and ‘text and data mining’ copyright exceptions to illegally ‘scrape’ the world’s music for AI training and make generative AI output.”

Music companies can make a “rights reservation” online, on behalf of songwriters, singers and composers, which hits legal criteria. It is free to sign up and available in seven languages.

The group said it chose to use the words “rights reservations” over the term “opt out” because the latter phrase implied that copyright-protected music can be legally used until someone acted.

Jackie Alway, chairwoman of ICMP and executive vice-president for legal and industry affairs at Universal Music, said: “As music publishers, we work every day to defend the rights of songwriters and composers worldwide. We are doing just that when it comes to ensuring respect for these rights and building a responsible, ethical, legal and innovative AI future.”

This week, artists ranging from Elvis Costello to Ja Rule and Mumford & Sons as well as the estates of Frank Sinatra and Bob Marley signed a letter co-ordinated by the Artists Rights Alliance calling on AI companies to respect their copyright.

As well as the copyright to music and lyrics, the industry is concerned about the rise of voice cloning. Last month, the UK music industry launched its first legal initiative against AI “deepfake” technology by threatening to sue Voicify, a start-up producing songs imitating the voices of musicians such as Amy Winehouse, Rihanna and Drake.

Universal Music Group and other publishers have sued Anthropic, a ChatGPT competitor, for allegedly distributing copyrighted lyrics using its Claude 2 technology. Anthropic asked the court to reject the case on the grounds that Universal, ABKCO and Concord Music could not show they had been irreparably damaged, and it said the companies had filed the case in the wrong court.