Major music labels sue Anthropic over AI training data

Major music publishers are suing Anthropic, alleging the AI lab pirated copyrighted lyrics and sheet music to train Claude.

Sony Music Publishing, Warner Chappell, and other publishers filed a federal lawsuit in California, as first reported by Music Business Worldwide. The lawsuit accuses Anthropic and its co-founders of a "brazen campaign" of torrenting and scraping copyrighted works. Anthropic told TechCrunch it disagrees with the claims and plans to defend itself in court.

Why it matters: This lawsuit hits Anthropic right where it hurts. In a recent case, a judge ruled that training AI on copyrighted work is legal, but acquiring that work through piracy is not. That single decision cost Anthropic $1.5 billion. If publishers prove Anthropic torrented their catalogs, the financial hit could be massive.

The lawsuit specifically accuses Anthropic of downloading millions of pirated books that contained sheet music and lyrics.

Where AI labs get their training data is quickly becoming their biggest legal liability.