Music publishers file major copyright lawsuit against Anthropic over AI training data

Major music publishing houses including Sony Music Publishing and Warner Chappell have filed a lawsuit against AI firm Anthropic, alleging the company engaged in systematic copyright infringement to train its Claude language model. The filing, made in late August in California's federal court, charges Anthropic with a "brazen campaign" of illegal file-sharing and scraping to obtain thousands of copyrighted musical works.

The allegations#

The publishers claim Anthropic specifically used illegal torrenting and unauthorized downloads to acquire millions of copies of music-related content, including lyrics and sheet music. The lawsuit describes the alleged conduct as "blatant theft" intended to fuel the training of the AI system. Anthropic has not publicly responded to the claims.

Escalating IP battles#

This case marks the latest in a mounting series of copyright disputes Anthropic faces. Earlier legal action by Universal Music Group and Concord Music Group—led by the same legal team behind this new lawsuit—accused Anthropic of unlawfully using copyrighted works. More significantly, Anthropic lost a case brought by author groups in what's known as Bartz v. Anthropic, and was ordered to pay $1.5 billion after a judge determined that while AI training with copyrighted material might be permissible, acquiring it through piracy is not.

What's different this time#

Though this latest suit echoes arguments from prior cases, it casts a wider net. The publishers are focusing specifically on the method Anthropic allegedly used—direct piracy of digital files—and the scale of the operation across music publishing catalogs, positioning it as distinct from and more serious than earlier disputes.