Sony Music Publishing and Warner Chappell Sue Artificial Intelligence Developer Anthropic
Dario Amodei, Co-Founder of Anthropic
More trouble for the AI world and the technology that allegedly would replace humans is on the horizon. Yet another copyright infringement suit is on the table for AI developer ‘Anthropic"‘, makers of Claude Code - this time for the infringement of thousands of songs that were supposedly used to develop Claude’s infrastructure and code. Already having to settle a recent suit for over $1.5B for the illegal pirating of books from platforms Library Genesis, Pirate Library Mirror, Common Crawl, The Pile, and Books3, this clearly wasn’t enough for Anthropic to understand that pirating copyrighted material is not only unlawful but damaging to creative infrastructure as a whole.
This lawsuit, filed by Sony Music Publishing (SMP) and Warner Chappell (WCM), names Anthropic co-founders Dario Amodei and Benjamin Mann as individual defendants as there is much evidence of communications of both parties deliberately dismissing copyright laws to obtain the resources they copied. SMP and WCM are seeking statutory damages of up to $150,000 per work that was infringed upon plus $25,000 for each alleged removal of copyright management information. The complaint identifies thousands of the music publisher’s works which brings this suit into the multi-billion-dollar range. The complaint in which it states -
“Among the innumerable copyrighted works Defendants illegally harvested to fuel Claude are thousands upon thousands of Music Publishers’ copyrighted musical compositions, including such beloved songs as “Ain’t No Mountain High Enough,” “All I Want for Christmas is You,” “Eye of the Tiger,” “Here Comes Santa Claus,” and “Paper Rings.” In blatant violation of copyright law, Defendants have unlawfully acquired troves of Music Publishers’ musical compositions, and then systematically copied those works multiple times, including as the inputs to train Anthropic’s Claude AI models and in the outputs those models generate.”
Sony Music Publishing and Warner Chappell are demanding a jury trail for this matter and that all infringing copies of the works are destroyed. Also, the demand would require that Anthropic shares an account of Claude’s training data.
“[We] bring this action to hold accountable the culprits behind one of the largest and most blatant ongoing thefts of intellectual property in history. Defendants Anthropic and its founders Dario Amodei and Benjamin Mann have conducted a brazen campaign of illegally torrenting, scraping, and downloading copyrighted works on a massive scale in order to develop, operate, and reap enormous profits from Anthropic’s “Claude” series of artificial intelligence (“AI”) models.”
The suit brings four counts: (i) Direct infringement by torrenting, against all three defendants; (ii) contributory infringement by torrenting, against Amodei and Mann and against Anthropic alone; (iii) direct infringement and (iv) removal or alteration of copyright management information.
“Music Publishers recognize the potential of ethical AI technology, and they have entered licenses permitting the authorized use of their musical compositions in connection with AI. It remains crucial, however, that AI development occurs responsibly and on terms that are agreeable to rights-holders and in a manner that protects their rights, livelihoods, and the creative industries as a whole.Even the most revolutionary of technologies must develop within the bounds of the law, and Anthropic‘s Claude models are no different.”
After being found liable in September of 2025 for over $1.5B for torrenting books, it now seems Anthropic can also be held liable for the same behavior towards torrenting music. You would think that a previous liability for this action would deter Anthropic’s measure to acquiring information, but it seems the large AI developer, Anthropic, doesn’t believe in the ethics of acquisition or the law itself. Anthropic is being sued by Universal Music Publishing Group, Concord Music Group, and ABKCO as well for roughly over 20,500 songs, estimated at about $3B. BMG and Round Hill Music also have a lawsuit on the table for Anthropic for over 400 songs as this was filed August 17th.
