Sony Music Publishing and Warner Chappell File Lawsuit Against Anthropic Alleging Claude AI Trained on Pirated Songs

Sony Music Publishing and Warner Chappell Music sued Anthropic in a California federal court on Friday, claiming the AI firm illegally copied copyrighted songs to train its Claude models. The complaint names co‑founders Dario Amodei and Benjamin Mann as individual defendants along with Anthropic.

According to Axios, the lawsuit alleges that Anthropic used ‘tens of thousands’ of the publishers’ copyrighted compositions to train its models without obtaining permission. The 48‑page filing characterizes the alleged behavior as ‘one of the largest and most blatant ongoing thefts of intellectual property in history.’ The cited works include Mariah Carey’s ‘All I Want for Christmas Is You,’ Taylor Swift’s ‘Paper Rings,’ Marvin Gaye’s ‘Ain’t No Mountain High Enough,’ and the 1980s rock staple ‘Eye of the Tiger.’

The complaint accuses Anthropic of acquiring the copyrighted works via piracy repositories such as Library Genesis and Pirate Library Mirror. It claims the company downloaded books that contain the lyrics and sheet music for tracks like ‘Livin’ on a Prayer,’ ‘Hallelujah,’ and ‘Great Balls of Fire.’ The publishers argue that training Claude on this material enables the model to produce near‑identical reproductions of the songs and to generate AI‑written lyrics that compete with human‑created music.

Sony Music Publishing and Warner Chappell are demanding a jury trial and statutory damages of up to $150,000 for each allegedly infringed composition. Axios points out that statutory damages are especially powerful in this context, as plaintiffs do not have to prove actual financial loss to recover them for individual copyrighted recordings.

Anthropic has denied the allegations. In a statement, the company said, ‘We disagree with the publishers’ claims and intend to mount a vigorous defense in court.’

This is not Anthropic’s first brush with copyright litigation. In September 2025 the company settled a class‑action suit brought by authors over allegedly pirated training data, agreeing to pay $1.5 billion after a court ruled that while using copyrighted works in AI training is not per se illegal, acquiring those works via piracy is unlawful. A separate action filed by BMG accuses Anthropic of infringing 493 compositions.

TechCrunch reports that the Sony and Warner Chappell complaint is broader than the earlier cases and relies on evidence and arguments formulated in the prior litigation.

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