On February 28, music publishing subsidiaries of Sony Music and Warner Music filed a lawsuit against Anthropic in a California federal court, alleging the company used copyrighted musical works without authorization to train its Claude AI models.
The lawsuit claims Anthropic scraped hundreds of song lyrics and compositions from artists including The Beatles, Taylor Swift, Michael Jackson, and hundreds of others to train Claude to respond to human prompts. It also accuses Anthropic of downloading the works illegally via torrent links and, in some cases, causing Claude to reproduce copyrighted lyrics "verbatim" when asked.
This is the latest in a wave of lawsuits by copyright holders — including authors, publishers, music labels, and news outlets — against tech companies for using their works to train AI systems. Universal Music Group previously sued Anthropic in 2023 and again this year on similar grounds.
Last year, Anthropic became the first AI company to reach a settlement with a group of authors in a class-action lawsuit, agreeing to pay $1.5 billion. However, plaintiffs in the new lawsuit argue: "Anthropic clearly treats this as just a cost of doing business because its entire business model continues to rely on copyright infringement." They also note that $1.5 billion "is plainly not large enough to deter a company that has turned large-scale infringement into a valuation of up to $2 trillion."
In response, an Anthropic spokesperson called this "the third lawsuit from the same group of lawyers, recycling allegations from prior cases." The spokesperson maintained that training AI constitutes fair use of copyrighted material and that the company will "vigorously" defend itself in court.
Sony and Warner also accuse Anthropic of using lyrics to teach Claude "to generate large volumes of 'new' AI lyrics that are purportedly harmful substitutes for the publishers' legitimate works in the market."
The music companies are seeking damages of up to $150,000 per infringed work and asking the court to issue an injunction barring Anthropic from using their works.
