Music publishers have filed a lawsuit against AI lab Anthropic, alleging the company used copyrighted lyrics and sheet music to train its Claude AI model.
Key facts
- •The lawsuit was filed late Friday in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California.
- •Plaintiffs include Sony Music Publishing and Warner Chappell.
- •The complaint alleges Anthropic used illegal torrenting to obtain copyrighted lyrics and sheet music.
- •Anthropic has stated it intends to defend itself against the claims in court.
- •The legal team representing the publishers also represents Concord Music Group and Universal Music Group in a separate ongoing case.
Sony Music Publishing, Warner Chappell, and several other music publishers have filed a lawsuit against AI company Anthropic and its co-founders, Dario Amodei and Benjamin Mann. The complaint, filed in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, alleges that Anthropic engaged in a campaign of illegal scraping and downloading of copyrighted works to train its Claude AI model.
Allegations of Copyright Infringement
The lawsuit accuses Anthropic of what the publishers describe as "blatant theft" of copyrighted material. The plaintiffs claim the AI lab used thousands of protected works, specifically citing the unauthorized acquisition of millions of copies of books containing lyrics and sheet music through illegal torrenting.
Anthropic Response and Legal History
In an emailed statement, an Anthropic spokesperson stated that the company disagrees with the publishers' claims and intends to defend itself in court. This litigation follows previous intellectual property cases against the company, including a suit brought by Concord Music Group and Universal Music Group, as well as the Bartz v. Anthropic case involving a group of authors.
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This article was independently rewritten by ManyPress editorial AI from reporting originally published by TechCrunch.
