Sony, Warner Music sue Anthropic over songs used in AI training
Pirated song lyrics and sheet music from The Beatles, Taylor Swift, Michael Jackson and hundreds of other artists were allegedly used to train Claude AI models.
Sony Music and Warner Music have filed lawsuits against Anthropic in a California federal court, claiming the AI company misused their copyrighted songs to train its Claude models. The complaint, filed on Friday, alleges that Anthropic pirated hundreds of song lyrics and sheet music from artists like The Beatles, Taylor Swift, and Michael Jackson, among others.
The lawsuit is part of a growing trend of copyright disputes between tech companies and rights holders as AI systems increasingly rely on copyrighted material for training. Anthropic faced a class action settlement of US$1.5 billion from authors in 2023, but Sony and Warner contend this sum is insufficient to deter the company's extensive infringing activities, which have propelled its valuation to a staggering US$2 trillion.
The complaint further asserts that Anthropic acquired the publishers' copyrighted lyrics and sheet music through torrent downloads, enabling Claude to reproduce copyrighted lyrics verbatim when prompted. Additionally, the labels claim that Anthropic used these lyrics to train Claude to generate new AI-generated song lyrics, which compete with the publishers' legitimate copyrighted works and pose a threat to the market.
Sony and Warner are seeking damages of up to US$150,000 per infringed copyright and a court order prohibiting Anthropic from using their works.
Written by urgent.news from Free Malaysia Today's reporting — not their text. Machine-written — may contain errors; check the original before relying on it.
