Sony Music and Warner Chappell Sue Anthropic Over Copyright Infringement

Sony Music and Warner Chappell have filed a lawsuit against AI‑model developer Anthropic in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California. The suit alleges that Anthropic used “tens of thousands” of copyrighted works in training its language models without permission. The plaintiffs are seeking up to $150,000 in damages for each infringed work and an additional $25,000 for every instance in which identifiable copyright data was removed.

The claim could translate into several billion dollars if the court awards the maximum amounts, underscoring the scale of the alleged infringement. The case follows Anthropic’s recent $1.5 billion settlement with the publishing industry and comes amid a series of lawsuits targeting the company over its use of copyrighted text to train artificial‑intelligence systems. The plaintiffs argue that the data was used in a way that violates copyright law, while Anthropic maintains that its use falls under permissible transformation and fair‑use provisions.

The outcome of this litigation will likely influence how AI firms source and process copyrighted material. As the legal battle continues, industry observers are watching closely to see whether the court will set a new precedent for the use of copyrighted works in machine‑learning training.