Sony Music and Warner Chappell have filed a lawsuit against Anthropic in the US District Court for the Northern District of California, alleging that the company used tens of thousands of copyrighted songs without permission to train its Claude series of AI models. The music publishers are seeking damages of up to $150,000 per copyrighted work, plus an additional $25,000 for each instance where identifiable copyright management data was stripped. If a court awards the maximum amount, the total damages could reach several billion dollars.
The lawsuit describes the alleged conduct as one of the largest and most blatant ongoing thefts of intellectual property in history, according to the filing. The plaintiffs accuse Anthropic and its founders, Dario Amodei and Benjamin Mann, of illegally torrenting, scraping, and downloading copyrighted works on a massive scale to develop and profit from the Claude AI models. The complaint names specific songs found in Anthropic’s training data, including Marvin Gaye and Tammi Terrell’s “Ain’t No Mountain High Enough," Bon Jovi’s “Livin’ On a Prayer," Earth, Wind & Fire’s “September," Leonard Cohen’s “Hallelujah," and Taylor Swift’s “Paper Rings."
This lawsuit is the latest in a series of legal challenges facing Anthropic. The company recently settled a separate suit brought by the publishing industry for $1.5 billion. Anthropic is also facing multiple lawsuits from Universal Music Group, Concord, and ABKCO, as well as separate legal actions from BMG and Round Hill Music. The new case adds another layer of legal pressure on the AI company over its use of copyrighted material in training data.
Anthropic did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the lawsuit. The case is part of a broader wave of litigation from music rights holders against AI developers, as the industry seeks to address how models are trained on existing creative works. The outcome could have significant implications for AI companies operating in the US, where copyright law protections are a key factor in the technology sector’s growth.
The plaintiffs in this case are asking the court to hold Anthropic accountable for what they describe as a brazen campaign of copyright infringement. The lawsuit’s demand for damages tied to the removal of copyright management data highlights a specific legal concern about how training data is processed. US courts will now weigh the claims, which could set a precedent for how AI training practices are evaluated under federal copyright law.
More AI news from TechManNews.
