Music giants Sony-Warner sue Anthropic over alleged copyright infringement involving tens of thousands of songs used to train AI
Global music companies Sony Music and Warner Chappell have sued Anthropic, the maker of Claude, alleging large-scale copyright infringement involving song lyrics and sheet music used to train its AI models.
International media report that Sony Music Publishing and Warner Chappell Music have filed a lawsuit against Anthropic in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, accusing the company of conducting a systematic and brazen campaign of copyright infringement.
The complaint alleges that Anthropic used torrents, scraping and downloads to obtain vast quantities of copyrighted works, including song lyrics and sheet music, without permission and use them as training data for its Claude AI model. The lawsuit also names Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei and co-founder Benjamin Mann as defendants.
The plaintiffs are seeking a jury trial and statutory damages of up to $150,000 per infringed work, plus $25,000 for each instance of removing Copyright Management Information. Across all the works involved, total damages could reach billions of dollars. The lawsuit highlights the escalating conflict between creative industries and AI developers over the use of copyrighted material for model training.
The case marks an increasingly assertive stance by major global music rights holders seeking to protect intellectual property from unauthorized use. It could set a significant legal precedent for the AI industry worldwide, including in Thailand.