Sony Music and Warner Chappell Sue Anthropic Over AI Lyric Theft
Sony Music Publishing and Warner Chappell Music sued Anthropic on September 1, alleging the AI company built its Claude chatbot in part by illegally downloading and scraping copyrighted song lyrics from pirated databases and licensed lyric sites.
The complaint marks the fifth music-copyright lawsuit filed against Anthropic, following an earlier case in October 2023 covering roughly 500 songs and a January 2026 suit covering more than 20,000 works that sought $3 billion in damages.
What the Lawsuit Alleges
According to the complaint, Anthropic downloaded, scraped, and torrented songs from Library Genesis and Pirate Library Mirror, two well-known repositories of pirated books and other copyrighted material. The publishers also allege Anthropic scraped licensed lyric sites Musixmatch and LyricFind to obtain lyrics it was not authorized to use for training its AI models.
The lawsuit names specific works allegedly used without permission, including songs by The Beatles, Mariah Carey, Leonard Cohen, the Mark Ronson and Bruno Mars collaboration "Uptown Funk," Survivor, Taylor Swift, and the Marvin Gaye and Tammi Terrell duet catalog. The publishers argue that training an AI system on copyrighted lyrics without a license amounts to large-scale infringement that undercuts the value of the material for the songwriters and rights holders who created it. Sony Music Publishing and Warner Chappell represent some of the most recognizable names in the music industry, and their decision to jointly pursue litigation signals how seriously major publishers are treating the threat AI training poses to their catalogs.
A Familiar Pattern for Anthropic
The complaint draws a connection to Anthropic's earlier "Project Panama" initiative, a book-scanning effort that has previously drawn scrutiny in separate litigation over how the company sourced training material. Sony and Warner Chappell argue the lyric-scraping allegations fit a broader pattern of Anthropic prioritizing rapid data collection over securing proper licenses.
Anthropic has faced a string of similar lawsuits from the music industry, reflecting a wider standoff between AI developers and content owners over how copyrighted material can be used to train large language models. The publishers are seeking damages of up to $150,000 per song for willful infringement, along with up to $25,000 for each instance in which copyright-management information was allegedly stripped from the material.
Part of a Larger Legal Reckoning
The music industry has increasingly turned to litigation as a primary tool for challenging AI companies over training data, arguing that voluntary licensing negotiations have not kept pace with how aggressively firms like Anthropic have pursued content for their models. Universal Music Group and other major publishers have pursued similar claims against AI companies in recent years, and courts are still working through how existing copyright law applies to AI training practices, including questions over what counts as fair use when a model is trained on copyrighted text rather than reproducing it directly to end users.
Anthropic has previously reached settlements in other copyright disputes, including a $1.5 billion copyright settlement that received final court approval, showing the company has been willing to resolve some claims rather than litigate them to a verdict. Whether this newest case follows a similar path or heads toward a trial remains to be seen, and the outcome could shape how other AI developers approach licensing lyrics and other copyrighted text going forward.
For now, the lawsuit adds Anthropic to a growing list of AI companies facing significant financial exposure over how their models were trained, with the music publishing industry signaling it intends to keep pressing the issue in court rather than wait for legislation or industry-wide licensing standards to catch up.
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