Sony Music, Warner Music accuse Anthropic of stealing tens of thousands of songs to train AI


09/01/2026

According to The Guardian, Sony Music Publishing and Warner Chappell, music publishers that oversee and safeguard the rights to works by numerous writers and composers, have initiated legal action against Anthropic, the creator of the Claude AI model.



aqua cloud
The publishers say that Anthropic reportedly utilized "tens of thousands" of copyrighted musical pieces unlawfully. These consist of Mariah Carey's "All I Want for Christmas is You," Survivor's "Eye of the Tiger," along with Marvin Gaye and Tammi Terrell's original takes on "Ain't No Mountain High Enough," Bon Jovi's "Livin' on a Prayer," and Leonard Cohen's "Hallelujah."

The legal complaint was submitted on August 28 in a court in California. The lawsuit's defendants include Anthropic, CEO Dario Amodei, and co-founder Benjamin Mann. Sony Music Publishing and Warner Chappell representatives assert that copyright law was breached by posting unauthorized versions of the lyrics and sheet music for Claude's training tracks. The labels state they are victims of "one of the most significant and blatant intellectual property thefts in history."

"We reject the publishers' claims and plan to robustly defend our stance in court," Anthropic representatives informed TechCrunch.

source: theguardian.com, techcrunch.com