Sony and Warner Chappell Sue Anthropic Over Lyrics Use

Music Business Worldwide reports that Sony Music Publishing and Warner Chappell Music have sued AI company Anthropic and its co-founders in a US federal court in Northern California. They claim Anthropic used thousands of copyrighted song lyrics to train its Claude AI models without permission.

Sony Music Publishing is the world's largest music publisher, and Warner Chappell Music is the third largest, with over 1.4 million songs. The plaintiffs say Anthropic illegally downloaded lyrics from sites like MusixMatch and LyricFind using BitTorrent, covering lyrics and sheet music.

They're asking for up to $150,000 per work and $25,000 for each removal of copyright info. If the court agrees, the total could reach billions. The lawsuit calls it one of the biggest and most blatant copyright thefts in history, and demands that Anthropic destroy the copies and reveal its training data.