Sony and Warner Music Sue Anthropic Over Alleged Copyright Infringement in AI Training

Sony Music and Warner Music have filed a lawsuit in California federal court against Anthropic, alleging that the company misused copyrighted song compositions to train its Claude AI models. The complaint, filed on Friday, August 28, claims that Anthropic pirated hundreds of song lyrics and sheet music from artists such as The Beatles, Taylor Swift, and Michael Jackson. The publishers allege that Anthropic obtained these materials through torrent downloads and that Claude can reproduce copyrighted lyrics verbatim when prompted. The plaintiffs are seeking damages of up to 150,000 dollars for each infringed copyright and a court order to bar Anthropic from using their works.

According to the complaint, Anthropic used the lyrics to teach Claude to generate new AI song lyrics that compete with legitimate copyrighted works as harmful market substitutes. One source notes that the lawsuit specifically cites the ability of the AI to change lyrics from one artist into the style of another, such as turning Eminem lyrics into a song written in the style of Beyonce. The suit also names Anthropic co-founder Benjamin Mann and CEO Dario Amodei as individual defendants, alleging that Mann used BitTorrent to download millions of pirated books and that Amodei approved the activity.

Anthropic has previously settled a class action lawsuit with a group of authors for 1.5 billion dollars. Sony and Warner argue in their filing that this settlement was not large enough to deter infringing conduct given the company's 2 trillion dollar valuation. In response, a spokesperson for Anthropic stated that the company will defend itself robustly. The spokesperson argued that AI training constitutes fair use of copyrighted material and characterized the lawsuit as a recycling of allegations from previous cases.

Coverage of the event varied by political lean. Center outlets focused on the legal facts of the filing and the broader trend of AI copyright litigation. Center-left and center-right outlets provided similar detailed accounts of the specific damages sought and the companies' arguments. One center outlet emphasized internal staff communications and the specific roles of Anthropic's founders in the alleged piracy.