Music publishing units of Sony Music and Warner Music have sued artificial intelligence company Anthropic in California federal court, accusing it of using copyrighted songs to train its Claude AI models without permission.
Sony and Warner said in a complaint that Anthropic pirated hundreds of song lyrics and sheet music from artists including The Beatles, Taylor Swift and Michael Jackson, as well as hundreds of other artists, to train Claude to respond to human prompts.
The lawsuit is the latest in a growing wave of cases brought by copyright owners, including authors, publishers, music companies and news organizations, over the use of copyrighted works to train AI systems.
Universal Music Group sued Anthropic in 2023 over the alleged use of copyrighted song lyrics in AI training. That case remains ongoing.
Anthropic became the first AI company to settle one of the disputes last year, when it agreed to pay $1.5 billion to resolve a class action brought by a group of authors.
“Anthropic clearly considers that to be just the cost of doing business given that its entire business model continues to be built on copyright theft,” Sony and Warner said in their complaint. “And $1.5 billion is obviously not a large enough settlement to deter infringing conduct by a company that has parlayed such mass infringement into a staggering $2-trillion-dollar valuation.”
Spokespeople for Anthropic, Sony Music and Warner Music did not immediately respond to requests for comment on Monday.
The complaint alleges that Anthropic illegally obtained the publishers’ lyrics and sheet music through torrent downloads to train Claude. It also alleges that Claude can reproduce copyrighted lyrics “verbatim” when prompted.
Sony and Warner said Anthropic used their lyrics to teach Claude to “generate vast quantities of purportedly ‘new’ AI-generated song lyrics, which compete with Music Publishers’ legitimate copyrighted works as harmful market substitutes.”
The publishers are seeking damages of up to $150,000 for each infringed copyright and a court order preventing Anthropic from using their works.
The case adds to mounting legal pressure on AI companies over how they obtain and use copyrighted material to develop generative AI systems. The outcome could help shape the rules governing the use of music, books, journalism and other creative works in AI training.
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Faustine Ngila is the AI Editor at Impact Newswire, based in Nairobi, Kenya. He is an award-winning journalist specializing in artificial intelligence, blockchain, and emerging technologies.
He previously worked as a global technology reporter at Quartz in New York and Digital Frontier in London, where he covered innovation, startups, and the global digital economy.
With years of experience reporting on cutting-edge technologies, Faustine focuses on AI developments, industry trends, and the impact of technology on society.
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