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

Sony Music Publishing and Warner Chappell have filed a lawsuit in a California federal court against Anthropic, the company behind the Claude chatbot, and its executives Dario Amodei and Benjamin Mann. The music publishers allege that Anthropic illegally used tens of thousands of copyrighted songs, including lyrics and sheet music, to train its AI models. The plaintiffs claim the company obtained this material through torrenting, scraping specialized sites like Musixmatch and LyricFind, and downloading books from pirate websites. Notable works cited in the complaint include songs by Taylor Swift, the Beatles, Michael Jackson, and Mariah Carey. The publishers are seeking damages of up to $150,000 per infringed work and $25,000 for the removal of identifying copyright data. The lawsuit references a previous copyright case brought by authors that Anthropic settled for $1.5 billion. The plaintiffs argue that Anthropic intentionally stripped copyright management information from the data to avoid paying licensing fees and to hide evidence of violations. A spokesperson for Anthropic stated that the company disagrees with the claims and intends to defend itself robustly in court. This legal action follows similar disputes involving Universal Music Group and Concord Music Group. Center left sources frame the event as part of a broader systemic conflict between technology companies and copyright holders, while center sources emphasize the specific technical methods of data scraping and the violation of website terms of service.