Sony Music and Warner Chappell Sue Anthropic Over Alleged Copyright Infringement
Sony Music and Warner Chappell have filed a lawsuit against AI company Anthropic in the US District Court for the Northern District of California, alleging massive copyright infringement. The suit claims that Anthropic illegally torrented, scraped, and downloaded copyrighted music works to train its AI models, including Claude. If successful, damages could reach several billion dollars due to potential penalties per work. This follows a recent $1.5 billion settlement with the publishing industry and multiple other lawsuits from major music entities like Universal Music Group. The complaint also names Anthropic co-founders Dario Amodei and Benjamin Mann as individual defendants, accusing them of downloading millions of pirated books via BitTorrent and Pirate Library Mirror. Specific songs allegedly included in training data include works by Marvin Gaye, Bon Jovi, Earth, Wind & Fire, Leonard Cohen, and Taylor Swift. Anthropic has not yet responded to the allegations. The case highlights growing legal challenges for AI companies using large-scale datasets that may infringe on intellectual property rights.
Tickers: $ANTH