Music Publishers Sue Anthropic Over Alleged Mass Piracy for AI Training

Sony Music Publishing and Warner Chappell Music have filed a federal lawsuit against AI company Anthropic, accusing it of a "brazen campaign" to illegally train its AI models on copyrighted songs. The lawsuit claims Anthropic engaged in massive-scale torrenting, scraping, and downloading of musical works without permission.

This legal action follows a previous settlement where Anthropic admitted to downloading millions of books from piracy sites for AI training. The music publishers are now alleging that similar methods were used to acquire lyric datasets, potentially leading to significant statutory damages per infringed work. The case highlights the ongoing legal battles between the music industry and AI developers over the use of copyrighted material in AI training data.