The Before-You-Publish AI Checklist
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Mathew PaquetChecklist · 4 min read

The Before-You-Publish AI Checklist

Five checks to run on anything an AI wrote before you publish it: the requests to avoid, the lines to search, the record to keep, the cover to check and the credits to give.

01 A draft you check, not text you own

On October 21, 2026, the music publisher Reservoir Media sued Anthropic in federal court in Northern California over the lyrics of 853 songs, Joni Mitchell's Big Yellow Taxi and Johnny Cash's Ring of Fire among them. It alleges Anthropic copied the lyrics to train Claude, and that Claude can hand them back or rewrite them when a user asks. Those are allegations. Anthropic's answer: "We disagree with the allegations and intend to defend this case vigorously."

Whoever wins, the split that matters to you is simple. What Claude learned from is Anthropic's fight. What you publish from it is yours. So treat what an AI gives you as a draft you check, not text you own.

The habit behind all five checks. Split it in two: what you can show, and what you only believe. "I think this line is original" is a belief. A search, a saved chat and a credit are things you can show.

None of this means AI writing is risky by default. Most of what Claude writes for an email or a sales page is new. The risk sits in the few lines that echo something famous, and those are the lines these checks catch.

02 Two checks on the words
1. Don't ask for a rewrite of a song, or for the style of a specific artist, for anything public or paid. That's the kind of request the complaint describes: someone asked Claude to rewrite well-known songs "for a modern audience", and, the complaint says, Claude called its own rewrites "very close to the originals: same structure, same hooks reused with light rewording." Ask for something new instead, in your own words, about your own product. 2. If a line sounds too good, search it. Copy the most distinctive phrase, paste it into a search engine inside quotation marks (the quotes make it look for those exact words in that order), and read the first page of results. If it's a lyric, a slogan or a title, you'll see it in seconds. Search the tagline that rhymes a little too neatly first.
03 Keep the record

3. Save what you asked for, what came back, and what you changed. If a question ever comes up, that record shows your work. A screenshot of the chat is enough. Most AI tools keep your chat history, so before you publish, open the chat behind the piece, screenshot or export it, and save it in the same folder as the published file, named with the date and the piece's title. Then write one line about what you changed.

04 Your cover and your credits
4. Check whether your AI plan covers you if someone sues over what it wrote. Look in your plan's terms of service for the words "indemnify" or "indemnification": that's the company promising to defend or pay for you in a claim. Then read the exclusions. The complaint itself describes one: since December 2023, it says, Anthropic's terms commit to cover Claude users in copyright lawsuits, but not users who knew or should have known their request would produce an infringing result. A request to rewrite a famous song is the kind of request that exclusion is written for. 5. Credit what you quote. When a piece quotes someone's words on purpose, a line, a lyric, a study, say whose they are and where they come from. Reservoir's suit includes a claim about songwriter credits and copyright notices being removed, which is why a credit is part of the check, not a courtesy.
05 The five checks, ticked
No rewrite or style-of request. Nothing in it came from "rewrite this song" or "in the style of [artist]".
The too-good lines searched. Each distinctive phrase pasted into a search engine, in quotes.
The record saved. The chat, what came back and what you changed, next to the published file.
The cover checked. Your plan's indemnification clause and its exclusions, read once.
The quotes credited. Every quoted line says whose it is and where it comes from.
My publish record
Piece: [TITLE] Published: [DATE] Where: [URL OR CHANNEL]
AI tool and plan: [TOOL / PLAN]
What I asked for: [PROMPT, SHORT]
Lines searched in quotes: [LINES] Matches found: [NONE / WHAT]
What I changed: [ONE LINE]
Quotes and their credits: [WHO / SOURCE]
Chat saved at: [FILE OR FOLDER]

Sources

The complaint: Reservoir Media Management v. Anthropic, filed October 21, 2026 (N.D. Cal.) Billboard: Reservoir sues Suno and Anthropic in new lawsuits over AI music training Music Business Worldwide: Suno and Anthropic sued by Reservoir Digital Music News: Reservoir files copyright, DMCA suits against Suno and Anthropic
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Before you publish the next thing an AI helped write, paste its most distinctive line into a search engine, in quotes.

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