Sony, Warner Sue Anthropic Over AI Training Data

The update

Sony Music and Warner Chappell have filed a lawsuit against Anthropic in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California. The publishers allege Anthropic conducted a “brazen campaign” of illegally torrenting, scraping, and downloading copyrighted works to train its Claude AI models. The complaint names Anthropic and co-founders Dario Amodei and Benjamin Mann as defendants. It claims specific copyrighted works—including songs by Marvin Gaye, Bon Jovi, Earth, Wind & Fire, Leonard Cohen, and Taylor Swift—were found in Anthropic’s training data.

Why it matters

This case escalates the legal battle over AI training data. The publishers are seeking up to $150,000 per work, plus additional penalties for stripping identifiable copyright data. If successful, the damages could amount to several billion dollars. The lawsuit follows a prior case where Anthropic was ordered to pay $1.5 billion for using pirated content to train its models.

What to watch

Anthropic has not yet responded to the lawsuit. The legal outcome will likely set a precedent for how AI companies can use copyrighted material without explicit permission.

Sources

• techcrunch.com — details on the lawsuit, allegations of illegal torrenting, and prior legal history
• theverge.com — specific songs named in the complaint and the scale of alleged infringement