Claude Knows Your Favourite Lyrics. But Did Anthropic Steal Them?
Sony and Warner say Claude was trained on pirated lyrics. With damages of up to $150,000 per work, the case could reshape how AI companies document their training data.
Claude may know the lyrics to your favorite songs.
Music publishers say Anthropic stole them.
But this case is not only about what Claude can reproduce. It is about where Anthropic got the copies.
Sony Music Publishing and Warner Chappell have sued Anthropic, CEO Dario Amodei and co-founder Benjamin Mann.
They allege that lyrics and sheet music from tens of thousands of songs were collected from pirate libraries, datasets, and websites to train Claude.
The complaint names songs including All I Want for Christmas Is You, Eye of the Tiger, Ain’t No Mountain High Enough, and Paper Rings.
The publishers also claim Claude can sometimes reproduce lyrics almost word for word.
They want access to Anthropic’s training records, destruction of unauthorized copies, and damages of up to $150,000 for each work the court finds was wilfully infringed.
With tens of thousands of alleged works, the theoretical maximum runs into billions.
No court has awarded that amount or ruled that Anthropic infringed these songs.
AI companies often compare training to human learning. This lawsuit attacks an earlier step: how the material was obtained before the model learned from it.
Fair use may protect some training. It does not automatically legalize a pirated source copy.
Should AI companies have to prove where every training file came from?
Full complaint: https://www.musicbusinessworldwide.com/files/2026/08/COMPLAINT-in-Sony_Music_Publishing_US_LLC_e.pdf
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