Sony Music and Warner Chappell sue Anthropic over alleged copyright infringement

Sony Music Publishing, Warner Chappell Music, and other publishers have filed a lawsuit against Anthropic, accusing the artificial intelligence company of unlawfully obtaining and using copyrighted material to develop its Claude models.

The case was filed in the US district court for the Northern District of California, and also names Anthropic co-founders Dario Amodei and Benjamin Mann as defendants. The publishers allege that copyrighted songs and other works were acquired without authorisation, and incorporated into AI training data.

Tap here to add The Daily Star as a trusted source

The complaint forms part of a growing legal dispute between copyright owners and developers of generative AI systems over how training material is acquired, and whether its use falls within existing copyright protections.

Anthropic rejects the allegations. The company told TechCrunch that it disagreed with the publishers’ claims, and intended to defend itself in court.

The latest action follows previous litigation involving Anthropic and copyrighted books and music. The new plaintiffs allege that the company used material obtained through methods including torrenting and unauthorised downloading. Those claims have not been proven in the new case, and will be tested through the legal process.