Music publishers sue Anthropic over alleged unauthorized use of copyrighted works

Sony Music Publishing, Warner Chappell and several other music publishers filed a complaint in U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California alleging that Anthropic and its co-founders Dario Amodei and Benjamin Mann used copyrighted songs, lyrics and sheet music without permission to train the company’s Claude AI model. The suit claims the firm obtained the material through large-scale torrenting, scraping and downloading of copyrighted works.

The filing, reported by Music Business Worldwide, describes the alleged conduct as a systematic effort to acquire millions of copies of books and music for training purposes. Anthropic responded that it disagrees with the publishers’ allegations and will defend itself vigorously in court.

The case follows earlier litigation involving Anthropic, including a January lawsuit brought by Concord Music Group and Universal Music Group and the Bartz v. Anthropic case, in which a judge ruled that while the use of copyrighted works for training may be permissible, acquiring them through piracy is not. Anthropic was previously ordered to pay $1.5 billion in that case.