In a federal lawsuit filed in California, music publishing divisions of Sony Music and Warner Music have accused Anthropic of unlawfully utilizing copyrighted song lyrics to train its AI models, specifically the Claude AI. The complaint, submitted on Friday, claims that Anthropic has unlawfully copied hundreds of lyrics and sheet music from renowned artists such as The Beatles, Taylor Swift, and Michael Jackson, among others, to enhance Claude's responsiveness to human interactions.
This lawsuit is part of a broader trend where copyright holders—including publishers, authors, music labels, and news organizations—are launching legal actions against technology companies for employing their creative works in training artificial intelligence. Notably, Universal Music Group has also filed similar lawsuits against Anthropic regarding its use of copyrighted song lyrics, with those cases currently still in progress.
In a significant development last year, Anthropic became the first AI organization to settle a legal dispute, agreeing to pay $1.5 billion to resolve a class action lawsuit from a cohort of authors.
In their filed complaint, Sony and Warner asserted that Anthropic seems to view such legal settlements as mere operating expenses, continuing to build its entire business model on what they characterize as “copyright theft.” The complaint highlights that a $1.5 billion settlement isn’t substantial enough to dissuade another occurrence of infringement by a company that has transformed widespread copyright violation into a valuation reaching an astonishing $2 trillion.
In response, a spokesperson for Anthropic stated on Monday that this is the third lawsuit brought by the same legal team, reiterating prior allegations already under judicial review. The representative clarified that the company intends to defend its position vigorously, asserting that the use of copyrighted materials in AI training constitutes fair use, as previously recognized by a judge in the authors’ litigation against them.
Representatives from Sony Music and Warner Music did not provide immediate comments regarding the lawsuit on Monday.
The complaint further claims that Anthropic illegally accessed the publishers' lyrics and sheet music through torrent downloads for training purposes. It contends that Claude can reproduce copyrighted lyrics “verbatim” upon request and asserts that the AI tool has been utilized to generate a substantial volume of what it asserts to be “new” AI-generated song lyrics. The complaint argues that these lyrics function as detrimental substitutes for the original copyrighted works, potentially harming the market for legitimate music. As a result, the music labels are seeking damages of up to $150,000 for each instance of copyright infringement and an injunction to prevent Anthropic from exploiting their works in the future.
