Sony Music, Warner Chappell Sue Anthropic Over Alleged Mass Copyright Infringement, Seek up to $150,000 per Song (UPDATED)

Editor’s note: The story has been updated to include a comment from Anthropic.

Sony Music Publishing and Warner Chappell Music, a unit of Warner Music Group Corp. (NASDAQ:WMG), sued AI startup Anthropic on Friday in a Northern California federal court.

The complaint also names co-founders Dario Amodei and Benjamin Mann.

The publishers accuse Anthropic of “illegally torrenting, scraping, and downloading” copyrighted songs to train its Claude AI models. Cited works include “Eye of the Tiger,” Marvin Gaye’s “Ain’t No Mountain High Enough” and Taylor Swift’s “Paper Rings.”

Piracy Claims Tied to Earlier Book Ruling

The lawsuit references a June 2025 court ruling that found Anthropic had downloaded more than 7 million pirated books from Library Genesis and Pirate Library Mirror. While the judge ruled that Anthropic’s use of copyrighted books to train its AI models was fair use, the acquisition of pirated copies remained at issue and was later resolved through a $1.5 billion settlement.

The publishers allege Claude can reproduce copyrighted lyrics in responses, potentially allowing the AI to substitute for licensed lyric services and undermine the market for human-created music.

“We disagree with the publishers’ claims and we intend to defend ourselves robustly in court,” an Anthropic spokesperson said to Benzinga.

Not Anthropic’s First Music Copyright Battle

Anthropic has faced music-copyright scrutiny before. A separate 2023-filed suit from Universal Music Group, Concord Music Group and ABKCO already secured court-approved “guardrails” requiring Anthropic to prevent unauthorized reproduction of copyrighted lyrics in Claude’s outputs.

Sony Music Publishing is part of Sony Group Corp. (NYSE:SONY). The companies are seeking a jury trial and statutory damages of up to $150,000 per infringed composition.

Anthropic has faced multiple copyright suits amid broader AI industry litigation over training-data sourcing.

Recently, the company reported preliminary second-quarter revenue of more than $11.5 billion, up over 14 times from the same period last year. It also reported its first positive adjusted operating income, ahead of a possible IPO.

Disclaimer: This content was partially produced with the help of AI tools and was reviewed and published by Benzinga editors.

Photo courtesy: Shutterstock