Sony, Warner Sue AI Firm Anthropic Over Alleged Mass Copyright Infringement

Music giants Sony Music Publishing and Warner Chappell have filed a lawsuit against AI company Anthropic, accusing it of a "brazen campaign" of intellectual property theft. The lawsuit, filed in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, alleges that Anthropic illegally used "tens of thousands" of copyrighted musical works to train its AI models.

The legal action centers on accusations of piracy, with Sony and Warner seeking significant damages. They are asking for up to $150,000 per infringed work, and an additional $25,000 for each instance where copyright data was stripped. This lawsuit follows a previous settlement where Anthropic admitted to pirating millions of books, a case that established a precedent for the illegality of downloading copyrighted material for AI training purposes.