Sony, Warner Music sue Anthropic, saying it pirated songs to train its AI

What the report says

Sony Music and Warner Music’s publishing arms have filed a federal copyright lawsuit in California against Anthropic, alleging the AI company used protected song lyrics and sheet music to train its Claude models without permission. According to the complaint reported by Al Jazeera, the case centers on works linked to artists including The Beatles, Taylor Swift and Michael Jackson, along with hundreds of others.

The publishers say Anthropic obtained the material through torrent downloads and used it to teach Claude how to respond to prompts, including by reproducing copyrighted lyrics and generating new text that could compete with licensed music publishing. The lawsuit seeks damages of up to $150,000 for each allegedly infringed work and asks the court to block further use of the material.

Al Jazeera reported that the case comes amid a broader wave of lawsuits from rights holders against AI companies over training data. Universal Music Group has also pursued claims against Anthropic, and the company previously reached a $1.5bn settlement in a separate class-action case brought by authors. Anthropic said it will fight the claims and argued that AI training is protected by fair use, while calling the filing repetitive and based on allegations already being litigated elsewhere.