Sony Music and Warner File Landmark Copyright Lawsuit Against Anthropic
Music giants Sony Music and Warner Music Group sue Anthropic, alleging systematic unauthorized ingestion of copyrighted lyrics and musical compositions for training Claude models.
Major record labels Sony Music Entertainment and Warner Music Group have jointly filed a federal copyright infringement lawsuit against AI powerhouse Anthropic. The complaint alleges a 'brazen campaign' of unauthorized scraping and ingestion of copyrighted musical compositions and lyrics.
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The plaintiffs claim that Anthropic's flagship Claude models generate near-verbatim lyrics and structured harmonic progressions of copyrighted songs when prompted. The lawsuit seeks statutory damages exceeding hundreds of millions of dollars and an injunction requiring Anthropic to purge dataset copies containing unlicensed catalog material.
This lawsuit marks a major escalation in the broader legal conflict between copyright holders and foundational AI builders, joining similar ongoing litigations brought by book authors and news publishers over fair use boundaries.