New copyright lawsuit over Claude’s training data: Sony and Warner may seek billions of dollars from Anthropic

Artificial intelligence company Anthropic is facing a new lawsuit alleging that it used copyrighted musical works without permission to train its Claude models. Sony Music Publishing and Warner Chappell Music have filed a joint lawsuit against the company.

The plaintiff music publishers argue that Anthropic collected copyrighted content on a large scale and through illegal methods to train its AI models. The lawsuit filing alleges that the works were downloaded from torrent networks, scraped from the internet, and obtained through various other means.

The companies characterize this process as a widespread and ongoing violation of intellectual property rights. It is alleged that thousands of copyrighted compositions belonging to the publishers were used without authorization in the training of Claude models.

COMPENSATION DEMAND COULD REACH BILLIONS

Sony Music Publishing and Warner Chappell Music are requesting a jury trial. The publishers are seeking up to 150 thousand dollars in damages for each work they claim has been infringed.

Another demand in the lawsuit concerns copyright management information. The plaintiffs are seeking 25 thousand dollars in damages for each instance where they claim Anthropic removed this information. It is noted that if the court accepts the allegations, the total amount of compensation could reach billions of dollars.

Anthropic has not yet shared its views on the lawsuit with the public.

This process is not the first copyright dispute Anthropic has had with the music industry. Concord Music Group and Universal Music Group also filed a lawsuit against the company in early 2026, alleging that Anthropic illegally downloaded more than 20 thousand copyrighted songs to train its AI models. In that case, over 3 billion dollars in damages were sought.

The company also made headlines in a copyright lawsuit filed by a group of authors, who alleged that pirated copies of books were used as training data. Anthropic reached a 1.5 billion dollar settlement in that case.

The new lawsuit has brought the debates regarding how data used in the training of AI models is collected back to the forefront. The court's decision could have precedent-setting consequences regarding the use of copyrighted musical works in AI training.

News Source: 12punto