Sony Sues Anthropic: AI Music Training Lawsuit

Sony Music and Warner Chappell have filed a lawsuit against Anthropic, accusing the AI company of illegally using copyrighted music to train its Claude AI models. The lawsuit, filed in a Northern California district court, names Anthropic cofounders Dario Amodei and Benjamin Mann. The publishing companies claim Anthropic conducted a "brazen campaign" of torrenting, scraping, and downloading copyrighted works on a massive scale. They allege Anthropic collected "thousands upon thousands" of songs, including "Eye of the Tiger," "Ain't No Mountain High Enough," and Taylor Swift's "Paper Rings." The complaint states Anthropic pirated works through digital archives like Library Genesis and Pirate Library Mirror. The lawsuit seeks statutory damages, including up to $150,000 for each copyrighted composition used to train Claude. This case highlights ongoing legal challenges as AI development intersects with intellectual property rights.