Sony, Warner Music sue Anthropic over songs used in AI training

Music labels Sony and Warner Music have filed a lawsuit against AI company Anthropic in a California federal court. The complaint alleges that Anthropic unlawfully utilized copyrighted song compositions from numerous artists, including The Beatles, Taylor Swift, and Michael Jackson, to train its Claude AI models. Sony and Warner contend that Anthropic obtained the lyrics and sheet music through unlawful torrent downloads, enabling Claude to reproduce them verbatim in response to human prompts.

The lawsuit follows a recent series of cases brought by copyright holders, encompassing authors, publishers, music labels, and news outlets, who claim their work was used to train AI systems. Universal Music Group had previously initiated a lawsuit against Anthropic last year, stemming from the alleged use of copyrighted song lyrics in AI training.

Anthropic became the first AI company to settle such a dispute last year, paying $1.5 billion to author plaintiffs. However, Sony and Warner assert that $1.5 billion is insufficient to deter a company that has amassed a $2 trillion valuation through such mass infringement. The complaint further asserts that Anthropic used the publishers' copyrighted materials to teach Claude to generate new AI-generated song lyrics, which compete with legitimate copyrighted works as harmful market substitutes.

The labels are seeking damages of up to $150,000 per infringed copyright and an injunction preventing Anthropic from utilizing their works in the future.