Technology

Sony Music and Warner Chappell sue Anthropic over AI training data

Music publishers accuse the AI developer of unauthorized scraping and torrenting of copyrighted songs to train its Claude models.

Updated Aug 29, 2026 · 19:20 UTC4 reports

The short version

Sony Music Publishing, Warner Chappell, and other publishers filed a copyright lawsuit against Anthropic and its co-founders in California federal court.
The suit alleges Anthropic illegally scraped, downloaded, and torrented thousands of copyrighted musical works to train its Claude AI models.
Plaintiffs are seeking a jury trial alongside statutory damages of up to $150,000 per infringed work and $25,000 per instance of removed copyright management information.
Anthropic has not publicly commented on the lawsuit.

Sony Music Publishing and Warner Chappell Music filed a lawsuit against Anthropic and co-founders Dario Amodei and Benjamin Mann in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California.[Business Insider · TechCrunch]
The lawsuit alleges that Anthropic illegally scraped, downloaded, and torrented thousands of copyrighted compositions through sources such as Library Genesis and Pirate Library Mirror to train its Claude AI models.[Business Insider · Engadget]
The plaintiffs requested a jury trial and are seeking statutory damages of up to $150,000 per infringed composition and up to $25,000 per instance of removed copyright management information.[Engadget · The Verge]
The complaint alleges Claude models generate identical or near-identical copies of copyrighted lyrics in response to user prompts.[Business Insider]
Anthropic previously faced AI training copyright suits, including a case brought by authors that resulted in a $1.5 billion settlement and a lawsuit filed by Concord Music Group and Universal Music Group.[Engadget · TechCrunch]

Anthropic has not yet responded to requests for comment or formally filed its response to the legal claims.[Engadget · TechCrunch]