Sony Music and Warner Chappell File $1.5-Billion-Plus Lawsuit Against Anthropic Over Alleged Copyright Theft

Sony Music Publishing and Warner Chappell Music filed a federal complaint against Anthropic, the maker of the Claude AI chatbot, on Friday. The suit accuses the company of illegally scraping, torrenting and downloading tens of thousands of copyrighted songs to train its language models. The complaint was lodged in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California and names Anthropic, CEO Dario Amodei and co‑founder Benjamin Mann as defendants.

The 48‑page filing lists a wide range of well‑known tracks, including Mariah Carey’s “All I Want for Christmas Is You,” Survivor’s “Eye of the Tiger,” Marvin Gaye’s “Ain’t No Mountain High Enough,” and songs by Taylor Swift, The Beatles and Bon Jovi. The plaintiffs argue that Anthropic obtained the lyrics, sheet music and associated text data through unauthorized channels such as torrent sites, the Common Crawl archive and pirate databases like Library Genesis.

Beyond training data, the suit claims that Anthropic allowed Claude to reproduce verbatim lyrics in response to user prompts, effectively competing with the original works. The complaint also alleges that the company stripped identifying metadata from the tracks during processing, denying songwriters proper credit and attribution.

Sony and Warner seek a jury trial and statutory damages of up to $150,000 for each infringed composition, plus $25,000 for every instance in which copyright management information was removed. Because the complaint references tens of thousands of songs, the potential award could reach several billion dollars.

Anthropic has defended itself by citing the transformative nature of AI training under fair‑use doctrine. An Anthropic spokesperson said the lawsuit repeats earlier claims and that the company intends to fight the allegations in court.

The lawsuit follows Anthropic’s 2025 settlement of $1.5 billion with authors over pirated books used to train its Claude models. That settlement, approved in July 2026, highlighted the company’s willingness to pay for the use of copyrighted works it acquired illegally.

Industry observers note that the case adds to a growing list of legal challenges facing AI firms. Universal Music Group, Concord, ABKCO, BMG and Round Hill have also filed suits against Anthropic, and Warner Chappell has threatened that copyright claims have no time limit.

The lawsuit underscores the tension between AI developers’ need for large datasets and the music industry’s insistence on licensing and attribution. It also raises questions about the adequacy of current copyright law in addressing the unique nature of machine‑learning training.

At present, the case is pending in federal court. Sony and Warner have not disclosed a timetable for discovery or trial. Anthropic has not yet announced a specific defense strategy beyond the fair‑use argument.

The outcome will likely influence how AI companies source training data and could set a precedent for future disputes over copyrighted material used in generative models.