Sony accuses Anthropic of 'brazen campaign' to train Claude on its music — and wants up to $150,000 a song
Sony Music and Warner Chappell have filed a lawsuit against AI company Anthropic, alleging the unauthorized use of copyrighted music to train its Claude AI models. The publishers are seeking significant damages, claiming the AI generates near-identical copies of protected lyrics and sheet music.
Why it matters
This case represents a critical legal battle over intellectual property rights and the training data practices of generative AI companies.
Sony Music and Warner Chappell filed a lawsuit against Anthropic on Friday. Illustration by Thomas Fuller/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images Claude seems to be a music fan. Sony Music and Warner Chappell sued Anthropic on Friday. The music companies said Anthropic trained its Claude AI models on stolen, copyrighted works. Sony Music and Warner Chappell want Anthropic to pay up. The publishing companies filed a lawsuit against Anthropic in a Northern California district court on Friday. Anthropic cofounders Dario Amodei and Benjamin Mann were also named in the filing. "Defendants Anthropic and its founders Dario Amodei and Benjamin Mann have conducted a brazen campaign of illegally torrenting, scraping, and downloading copyrighted works on a massive scale in order to develop, operate, and reap enormous profits from Anthropic's 'Claude' series of artificial intelligence ('AI') models," the companies said in the complaint.
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