Sony accuses Anthropic of 'brazen campaign' to train Claude on its music — and wants up to $150,000 a song

Sony Music and Warner Chappell sued Anthropic on Friday.

The music companies said Anthropic trained its Claude AI models on stolen, copyrighted works.

Sony Music and Warner Chappell want Anthropic to pay up.

The publishing companies filed a lawsuit against Anthropic in a Northern California district court on Friday. Anthropic cofounders Dario Amodei and Benjamin Mann were also named in the filing.

"Defendants Anthropic and its founders Dario Amodei and Benjamin Mann have conducted a brazen campaign of illegally torrenting, scraping, and downloading copyrighted works on a massive scale in order to develop, operate, and reap enormous profits from Anthropic's 'Claude' series of artificial intelligence ('AI') models," the companies said in the complaint.

Anthropic denied the accusations in a statement. "We disagree with the publishers' claims and we intend to defend ourselves robustly in court," the company said.

Sony Music Publishing and Warner Chappell Music said Anthropic collected "thousands upon thousands" of copyrighted songs, including 80s anthem "Eye of the Tiger," Marvin Gaye's "Ain't No Mountain High Enough," Mariah Carey's "All I Want for Christmas is You," and Taylor Swift's "Paper Rings."

In the lawsuit, the publishing companies said Anthropic has pirated their copyrighted works through a range of methods, including two digital archives, Library Genesis and Pirate Library Mirror. In June 2025, a judge ruled that Anthropic downloaded over 7 million pirated books to train Claude.

"Among the many millions of books that Defendants torrented from these illegal pirate websites were books containing the lyrics and sheet music to hundreds or more of Music Publishers' copyrighted musical compositions, identified in Exhibit A. Those works include 'Livin' On a Prayer,' 'September,' 'Great Balls of Fire,' 'Ramblin' Man,' and 'Hallelujah,'" the lawsuit says.

As a result, Claude models generate identical or near-identical copies of the copyrighted work in their responses to users, the companies alleged. In the lawsuit, the companies said training Claude on copyrighted content allows it to produce AI-generated lyrics that will ultimately compete with human-made songs.

Sony Music and Warner Chappell requested a jury trial. They're seeking statutory damages from Anthropic, including up to $150,000 for each composition it used to train Claude.

"Even the most revolutionary of technologies must develop within the bounds of the law, and Anthropic's Claude models are no different," the companies said in the complaint.