Sony and Warner Sue Anthropic for Copyright Infringement Over Music Used to Train AI
Major music publishers have filed a U.S. lawsuit against Anthropic, alleging the unauthorized use of copyrighted lyrics and sheet music to train its AI models.
A coalition of music publishers led by Sony Music Publishing and Warner Chappell Music filed a lawsuit against Anthropic and its founders, Dario Amodei and Benjamin Mann, in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California on August 28, 2026.
The plaintiffs allege that Anthropic committed egregious copyright infringement by systematically using vast quantities of copyrighted lyrics and sheet music to train its Claude AI models. The lawsuit claims Anthropic obtained the material through web scraping and BitTorrent downloads from pirate sites such as Library Genesis.
The plaintiffs are demanding a jury trial and seeking statutory damages of up to $150,000 per willfully infringed work, plus $25,000 per violation for the removal of copyright management information.
The lawsuit follows an earlier copyright case against Anthropic over the use of pirated books for AI training, which the company settled for $1.5 billion in July 2026.
This lawsuit marks a major milestone for both the music and AI industries, as it could set a global legal precedent regarding the use of copyrighted intellectual property to train AI models, directly impacting development costs and future AI innovation.