Anthropic Sued by Music Publishers: Why Claude’s Training Data Faces a Billion-Dollar Legal Threat
Sony Music Publishing and Warner Chappell Music, along with other music publishers, have filed a lawsuit against Anthropic, its CEO Dario Amodei, and co-founder Benjamin Mann for copyright infringement.
AsiaAI Publisher · August 31, 2026 · 2 min read · Source: ITmedia AI+
Policy & Regulation
Sony Music Publishing and Warner Chappell Music, along with other music publishers, have filed a lawsuit against Anthropic, its CEO Dario Amodei, and co-founder Benjamin Mann for copyright infringement. The lawsuit, filed in a California federal court, alleges that Anthropic used pirated music lyrics and sheet music from illegal sites like LibGen and PiLiMi to train its Claude AI model, describing it as “one of the largest and most blatant intellectual property thefts in history.” The plaintiffs also claim Anthropic intentionally removed copyright management information during data cleaning and that Claude can reproduce lyrics verbatim.
This lawsuit follows a previous class-action settlement by Anthropic with authors for $1.5 billion over similar allegations of using pirated books. The music industry is now applying similar legal pressure, with potentially billions of dollars in damages sought, indicating a broad front of content owners challenging AI developers.