In the newest case over AI music training, the two music giants claim Claude was "built on copyright theft," ranging from iconic Christmas songs to Taylor Swift hits.
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Sony Music Entertainment and Warner Music Group have filed a new copyright lawsuit against Anthropic, claiming the artificial intelligence giant “illegally harvested” more than 20,000 of their songs to train its models.
The case, which follows a similar lawsuit by Universal Music Group, BMG and Round Hill, claims Anthropic stole thousands of songs to “fuel Claude,” including “Ain’t No Mountain High Enough,” Mariah Carey‘s “All I Want for Christmas is You,” and Taylor Swift’s “Paper Rings.”
“[Publishers] bring this action to hold accountable the culprits behind one of the largest and most blatant ongoing thefts of intellectual property in history,” lawyers for the two majors write in a Friday (Aug. 28) complaint obtained by Billboard.
The new action comes after similar music lawsuits against Anthropic, an AI behemoth targeting a $2 trillion valuation — first by Universal Music Group and Concord, then more recently by BMG and by Round Hill Music. Major music firms have also brought such litigation against Suno, the leading music-specific AI firm.
In the new case, attorneys for Sony and Warner’s publishing units say they “recognize the potential of ethical AI technology,” but that “even the most revolutionary of technologies must develop within the bounds of the law, and Anthropic’s Claude models are no different.”
“These acts… inflict immense harm on music publishers and the songwriters they proudly represent,” the music companies write. The lawsuit also names Anthropic founder and CEO Dario Amodei and co-founder Benjamin Mann as defendants.
A spokesperson for Anthropic did not immediately return a request for comment on Monday (Aug. 31).
AI firms feed millions of works into models to “train” them to create new ones. Dozens of lawsuits have been filed across the country over that process, claiming it infringes copyrights en masse. AI companies say training is instead a legal form of copyright “fair use” that fuels innovation. That crucial argument is largely undecided, with billions in damages and licenses hanging in the balance.
Like other recent AI cases, Friday’s lawsuit claims Anthropic not only infringed copyrights by using the songs, but also in how it acquired them in the first place. That’s become a crucial element of such cases after a judge ruled last year that even if AI training is legal, using pirated materials to do it is not.
“In blatant violation of copyright law, defendants have unlawfully acquired troves of music publishers’ musical compositions,” Sony and Warner write, citing a “brazen campaign of illegally torrenting, scraping, and down copyrighted works on a massive scale.”
In that earlier case, Anthropic ended up paying a whopping $1.5 billion settlement after the judge’s piracy ruling. Sony and Warner cited that case as evidence of Anthropic’s wrongdoing — and said more legal action was clearly still needed.
“Anthropic clearly considers that to be just the cost of doing business given that its entire business model continues to be built on copyright theft,” the music companies write. “And $1.5 billion is obviously not a large enough settlement to deter infringing conduct by a company that has parlayed such mass infringement into a staggering $2-trillion-dollar valuation.”