Music Giants Accuse AI Firm of Stealing Thousands of Songs for Model Training

Sony Music and Warner Music Group have filed a copyright lawsuit against Anthropic, alleging the company used more than 20,000 songs without authorization to develop its Claude AI system. The complaint cites well-known tracks, including holiday classics and recent pop hits, and describes the practice as one of the largest intellectual property thefts on record. This legal action follows similar suits brought by other major music companies.

The lawsuit, filed Friday, names Anthropic's CEO Dario Amodei and co-founder Benjamin Mann as defendants alongside the company. The complaint characterizes the alleged infringement as one of the largest and most blatant intellectual property thefts on record, citing holiday classics and recent pop hits among the thousands of works involved.

This marks the third major music industry action against Anthropic, following earlier suits from Universal Music Group and Concord, then BMG and Round Hill Music. Anthropic's spokesperson dismissed the filing as recycled allegations from previous cases, asserting that training AI models constitutes transformative fair use—a central legal question that remains largely unresolved in courts.