Sony Music, Warner accuse Anthropic of ‘blatant theft’ in major new lawsuit

Some of the world’s biggest music publishers have launched a fresh lawsuit against Anthropic, accusing the artificial intelligence giant of conducting “one of the largest and most blatant ongoing thefts of intellectual property in history”.

The case adds to the legal challenges facing Anthropic as the firm eyes a potential blockbuster initial public offering, as the AI industry confronts growing pushback over its use of human-made material to train its models.

“US courts have focused on whether training data was lawfully obtained, finding that acquiring copyrighted material through unauthorised means may itself constitute infringement,” said Yu Lin, a partner at Han Kun Law Offices focusing on intellectual property litigation.

Sony Music Publishing, Warner Chappell Music and their affiliates – 35 publishers in total – filed complaints late on Friday with a court in California, accusing Anthropic and co-founders Dario Amodei and Benjamin Mann of “illegally torrenting, scraping and downloading copyrighted works on a massive scale”.

The plaintiffs are seeking an injunction and statutory damages for the alleged violations, which they said had helped Anthropic “develop, operate and reap enormous profits from” its Claude series of AI models.

“We disagree with the publishers’ claims and we intend to defend ourselves robustly in court,” Anthropic said in a statement in response.

The lawsuit comes as Anthropic reportedly pursues plans to go public in potentially one of the largest IPOs in history, with investors discussing a valuation of as much as US$2 trillion, according to the Financial Times.