Sony and Warner sue Anthropic over Claude training data

Sony Music Publishing, Warner Chappell, and other music publishers sued Anthropic and cofounders Dario Amodei and Benjamin Mann in California federal court, accusing the company of illegally torrenting, scraping, and downloading copyrighted works to train Claude, TechCrunch reports.

The complaint was filed in the US District Court for the Northern District of California. The publishers allege Anthropic used thousands of copyrighted musical compositions in training data for its Claude AI models.

The lawsuit claims Anthropic obtained copyrighted material through torrents, scraped lyric websites, downloaded works, scanned physical books, and removed copyright management information. The publishers are seeking a jury trial, statutory damages, destruction of infringing copies, and details about training data and methods.

Anthropic told TechCrunch that it disagrees with the claims and intends to defend itself in court. The company has faced other copyright lawsuits over AI training data, including cases brought by authors and music publishers.