Sony Music and Warner Chappell Music, along with other rights holders, file a federal lawsuit against Anthropic alleging copyright infringement related to training its Claude AI models. The complaint asserts that Anthropic used large volumes of copyrighted music without permission, describing the alleged activity as large-scale “theft” and seeking substantial damages.
Multiple outlets report the suit’s scope is a key differentiator from other music–AI cases, with allegations that Anthropic trained on “tens of thousands” of song works supplied by publishers. The plaintiffs also point to methods they claim were used to acquire content, including downloading or scraping from publicly accessible sources. One report details claims about metrics for other media acquisition, while describing allegations that lyric data was scraped from licensed lyric platforms.
The publishers seek statutory damages that could reach very large totals if the court awards maximum figures per work and per alleged instance of removal of copyright management information. The case is positioned by outlets as part of a broader, likely long-running dispute over how generative AI systems use copyrighted material and what liability standards apply.
