Music giants file multibillion-dollar copyright suit against AI firm Anthropic

Sony Music Publishing and Warner Chappell Music have jointly sued Anthropic, alleging the company illegally scraped and torrented thousands of copyrighted musical compositions to train its Claude AI models. The publishers seek up to $150,000 per infringed work and $25,000 per instance of removed copyright management information, potentially totaling billions in damages. This follows earlier lawsuits from other music publishers and a $1.5 billion settlement Anthropic reached with authors over similar claims.

The lawsuit, filed jointly by Sony Music Publishing and Warner Chappell Music, alleges Anthropic engaged in large-scale illegal downloading and scraping of copyrighted musical works to train its Claude AI systems. The publishers are pursuing statutory damages of up to $150,000 per infringed work plus $25,000 for each instance of removed copyright management information, which could total billions given the thousands of compositions cited.

This action follows earlier litigation from Concord Music Group and Universal Music Group, who sought over $3 billion for allegedly downloading more than 20,000 songs. Anthropic previously settled a separate copyright case with authors for a record $1.5 billion, signaling a pattern of legal challenges over its training data practices.