The fight over how AI companies use copyrighted material has now moved from books to music.
Sony Music Publishing and Warner Chappell Music have sued Anthropic over allegations that the company used copyrighted song lyrics and sheet music to train its Claude artificial intelligence models without permission.
The lawsuit, filed in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California on August 28, names Anthropic, CEO Dario Amodei, and co-founder Benjamin Mann as defendants.
The publishers are seeking damages of up to $150,000 for each copyrighted work they say was infringed, along with a court order preventing Anthropic from continuing to use their works in the way described in the complaint.
What Sony and Warner Are Alleging
The complaint accuses Anthropic of obtaining copyrighted musical works through several methods, including torrent downloads, scraping websites, and downloading material from third-party datasets. The publishers also allege that Anthropic obtained books from pirate sources that contained song lyrics and sheet music.
According to the complaint, the material was then used in developing and training Claude. The publishers also argue that Anthropic’s systems can also reproduce copyrighted lyrics when users ask Claude for them.
The works allegedly involved songs associated with artists including The Beatles, Taylor Swift, and Michael Jackson, alongside hundreds of other artists. Reuters reported that the lawsuit contains hundreds of song lyrics and pieces of sheet music, while the publishers describe the broader collection as involving tens of thousands of copyrighted compositions.
The complaint also alleges that Anthropic scrapped licensed lyric websites including Musixmatch and LyricFind, with the publishers saying these activities allowed Anthropic to obtain and reproduce copyrighted material without obtaining the necessary permissions.
Anthropic Plans to Fight the Case
Anthropic has rejected the publishers’ claims and said it intends to defend itself in court. A company spokesperson told TechCrunch that Anthropic disagrees with the allegations.
The case comes after Anthropic secured final approval for a separate $1.5 billion settlement with authors who accused the company of using pirated books to train Claude. In that case, a federal judge had previously ruled that training AI models on lawfully acquired books could qualify as fair use, while finding that obtaining pirated copies of books raised a separate copyright issue.
This settlement does not resolve the music publishers’ claims, and the Sony and Warner lawsuit will require the court to consider the allegations involving musical compositions separately.
Another Copyright Fight for AI
The lawsuit adds to a growing number of copyright disputes involving companies that develop generative AI systems. Authors, news organizations, publishers, and music rights holders have filed cases against AI companies over the use of copyrighted material in training datasets.
Sony Music Publishing and Warner Chappell’s case against Anthropic now puts one of the largest groups of music rights holders directly into the ongoing debate over how copyrighted creative works can be used to develop AI systems.
For now, the allegations in the lawsuit remain claims that must be tested in court. The case is pending in the Northern District of California under case number 5:26-cv-09217.
