Sony Music and Warner Chappell sue Anthropic, alleging theft of tens of thousands of songs to train Claude AI

Last month, Anthropic was at the center of public backlash for a plan called Project Panama, which aimed to "destructively scan all the books in the world" to train its Claude AI models. Now the AI company finds itself again facing the (copyright) music.

Sony Music Publishing and Warner Chappell Music have filed a lawsuit against Anthropic, naming CEO Dario Amodei and cofounder Benjamin Mann as individual defendants. The suit alleges that the company illegally downloaded, scraped, and torrented "thousands upon thousands" of copyrighted songs to train its AI models.

Allegations in the Lawsuit

The lawsuit, filed in federal court in Northern California, claims that Anthropic:

• Obtained lyrics and sheet music through pirate sources, including Library Genesis and the Pirate Library Mirror
• Scraped licensed lyric websites such as Musixmatch and LyricFind
• Incorporated the material into Claude's training data
• Produced models capable of reproducing copyrighted lyrics

"In blatant violation of copyright law, Defendants have unlawfully acquired troves of Music Publishers' musical compositions, and then systematically copied those works multiple times," the filing read, "including as the inputs to train Anthropic's Claude AI models and in the outputs those models generate."

The suit also notes that scraping and distributing Musixmatch content violates the site's user agreement, and LyricFind's privacy policy similarly prohibits reproduction "unless otherwise stated."

Damages Sought

Sony and Warner are seeking:

• Statutory damages of up to $150,000 for each song the court finds Anthropic infringed willfully
• Up to $25,000 for each instance in which copyright-management information was allegedly removed from a work

With the complaint covering at least "thousands if not tens of thousands" of works, potential damages could reach into the billions of dollars.

Songs Named in the Complaint

Among the songs listed are:

• Marvin Gaye and Tammi Terrell – "Ain't No Mountain High Enough"
• Mariah Carey – "All I Want for Christmas Is You"
• Survivor – "Eye of the Tiger"
• Leonard Cohen – "Hallelujah"
• Mark Ronson and Bruno Mars – "Uptown Funk"
• The Beatles – "I Am the Walrus"
• Taylor Swift – "Paper Rings" and "Cruel Summer"

Anthropic's Response

Anthropic rejected the allegations and said the company will "defend ourselves robustly" in court.

"This is the third lawsuit from the same lawyers, recycling allegations from cases already before the courts," an Anthropic spokesperson told Fortune.

History of Legal Action

Anthropic has faced multiple lawsuits from music publishers:

| Date | Plaintiffs | Scope | |------|------------|-------| | October 2023 | Universal Music Publishing Group, Concord Music Group, ABKCO | ~500 songs | | January 2024 | Same publishers | 20,000+ works, seeking over $3 billion | | 2025 | BMG and Round Hill Music | Separate suit, different counsel |

The new suit brings the total number of music-copyright lawsuits against Anthropic to five.

Anthropic's Other Copyright Fights

Anthropic points to Bartz v. Anthropic as precedent for its fair use defense in training AI models on human-made work. The company says "training generative AI models is a transformative fair use—as the court held in Bartz."

"In short, the purpose and character of using copyrighted works to train LLMs to generate new text was quintessentially transformative," Judge William Alsup wrote in June 2025. "Like any reader aspiring to be a writer, Anthropic's LLMs trained upon works not to race ahead and replicate or supplant them—but to turn a hard corner and create something different."

Anthropic settled the Bartz case in September 2025 for $1.5 billion with the owners of the copyrighted works. However, Sony and Warner said that settlement was insufficient.

"Anthropic clearly considers that to be just the cost of doing business given that its entire business model continues to be built on copyright theft," the new complaint read. "And $1.5 billion is obviously not a large enough settlement to deter infringing conduct by a company that has parlayed such mass infringement into a staggering $2-trillion-dollar valuation," the complaint stated, referencing Anthropic's IPO target.

"In the process of building and operating AI models, Anthropic unlawfully copies and disseminates vast amounts of copyrighted works—including the lyrics to myriad musical compositions owned or controlled by Publishers," the lawsuit filing read.

Sony Music Publishing and Warner Chappell did not immediately respond to Fortune's requests for comment.