Sony Music, Warner sue Anthropic, alleging a “brazen campaign” of intellectual property theft

In a lawsuit filed Friday in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, Sony Music Publishing, Warner Chappell, and various other music publishers are accusing Anthropic, along with its co-founders Dario Amodei and Benjamin Mann, of engaging in a "brazen campaign of illegally torrenting, scraping, and downloading copyrighted works."

According to Music Business Worldwide, the publishers claim Anthropic has committed "blatant theft" by utilizing thousands of copyrighted works to train its AI model Claude. Anthropic has not yet responded to requests for comment.

This is not Anthropic's first encounter with intellectual property lawsuits. Lawyers representing Sony Music Publishing, Warner Chappell, and Universal Music Group in a January case and in the Bartz v. Anthropic case, where Anthropic was ordered to pay $1.5 billion, are behind this latest legal action. While all the cases share similar arguments, this lawsuit is particularly extensive, building upon previous cases by alleging Anthropic's involvement in "flagrant piracy" through illegal torrenting to obtain millions of copies of books, including those containing lyrics and sheet music.