Sony Music Publishing and Warner Chappell have filed a lawsuit against Anthropic. The music publishers say the AI company used copyrighted songs without permission.
The lawsuit was filed in a California court on August 28. It names Anthropic along with chief executive Dario Amodei and co-founder Benjamin Mann.
The publishers claim Anthropic used tens of thousands of copyrighted songs to train its Claude AI models. They say the company copied lyrics without paying licensing fees.
What the Lawsuit Claims
The complaint lists several well known songs. These include Mariah Carey's "All I Want for Christmas Is You" and Marvin Gaye's "Ain't No Mountain High Enough."
Other songs named include Survivor's "Eye of the Tiger" and Bon Jovi's "Livin' on a Prayer." Leonard Cohen's "Hallelujah" is also part of the claim.
The publishers say Anthropic downloaded songs through torrenting and scraping. They also claim the company pulled data from pirate websites.
The lawsuit points to findings from an earlier case. That case showed Anthropic and Mann downloaded at least seven million pirated books.
The publishers also say Anthropic used legal lyric sites like Musixmatch and LyricFind. They claim the company scraped data from these sites without proper permission.
According to the complaint, Anthropic removed identifying information from songs during processing. The publishers say this stripped songwriters of credit for their own work.
The lawsuit describes the alleged actions as one of the largest cases of intellectual property theft in history. The publishers are seeking large financial damages.
Under copyright law, damages can reach $150,000 for each infringed work. Extra damages of $25,000 could apply for each altered piece of identifying data.
The suit refers to tens of thousands of songs being involved. That means total damages could run into billions of dollars.
Anthropic's Response and Past Cases
A spokesperson for Anthropic said the company disagrees with the claims. They said Anthropic plans to defend itself in court.
This is not the first copyright case Anthropic has faced. The company settled a similar lawsuit with US authors last year for $1.5 billion.
Anthropic has also faced legal claims from Universal Music Group and Concord Music Group. Those cases involve similar allegations about copyrighted material.
A separate legal fight recently involved AI music generator Suno. The company lost a copyright case brought by German licensing group GEMA over songs including Boney M's "Daddy Cool."
Ed Newton-Rex, a composer and copyright campaigner, commented on the new lawsuit. He said he was not surprised that rights holders were taking action against Anthropic.
Anthropic is currently preparing for a stock market listing. Reports suggest the company could be valued at two trillion dollars.
The case adds to the number of legal challenges facing AI companies over training data. Music publishers continue to push back against unauthorized use of their work.
