Setback for Anthropic? Sony, Warner Chappell file lawsuit against AI firm, accusing it of intellectual property theft
Sony Music and Warner Chappell sued AI firm Anthropic for massive copyright theft to train its Claude models.Summary
Sony Music and Warner Chappell filed a lawsuit in a Northern California district court against Anthropic and its co‑founders Dario Amodei and Benjamin Mann, alleging a "brazen campaign" of illegally torrenting, scraping, and downloading thousands of copyrighted songs and books to develop the Claude AI models. The complaint names specific works such as "Eye of the Tiger," "Ain't No Mountain High Enough," "All I Want for Christmas Is You," "Paper Rings," and numerous classic songs, and claims the defendants used pirate archives like Library Genesis and Pirate Library Mirror. The publishers seek a jury trial and statutory damages up to $150,000 per composition, arguing that even revolutionary technologies must respect intellectual‑property law. This case is seen as the start of a broader battle over AI companies' use of copyrighted material, following previous settlements such as a $1.5 billion agreement with authors and ongoing suits against OpenAI by entities like The New York Times.
(Source：Mint)