Anthropic Faces Multi-Billion Dollar Lawsuit From Sony & Warner Chappell In Latest War Over AI

Sony Music Publishing and Warner Chappell Music filed a massive lawsuit against Anthropic on Friday, August 28, in federal court in California, and they’re not holding back on their accusations.

The complaint describes what went down as “one of the largest and most blatant ongoing thefts of intellectual property in history,” and the numbers back up that claim.

The publishers are alleging that Anthropic systematically stole tens of thousands of copyrighted songs to train Claude, the company’s AI chatbot.

According to the filing, the company used illegal torrenting to obtain millions of pirated books from sites such as Library Genesis and Pirate Library Mirror, then scraped lyrics directly from licensed platforms, including MusixMatch and LyricFind.

The complaint specifically names classic tracks like “Ain’t No Mountain High Enough,” “All I Want for Christmas is You,” “Eye of the Tiger,” and Taylor Swift’s “Paper Rings” as works that were unlawfully harvested for training data.

The publishers are seeking up to $150,000 in statutory damages per infringed work, plus an additional $25,000 for each instance of removal of copyright management information.

With tens of thousands of compositions allegedly involved, the potential damages could easily reach into the billions.

This isn’t Anthropic’s first rodeo with copyright litigation.

According to Music Business Worldwide, Universal Music Publishing Group, Concord, and ABKCO already sued in October 2023, then filed a second suit in January 2026 seeking over $3 billion for more than 20,000 works.

BMG brought a third case in March 2026, and Round Hill filed a fourth just last month.

The company also settled with authors for $1.5 billion in September 2025 over similar piracy allegations, yet the publishers argue Anthropic clearly views these settlements as just another business expense.

The publishers also note that the guardrails Anthropic added after earlier litigation are easily circumvented by simply re-prompting the model to generate the same lyrics.

Anthropic’s $2 trillion valuation, projected for an October IPO according to a Forbes report cited in the complaint, makes the company an attractive target for massive damages claims.

The publishers are demanding a jury trial and representation by the same legal team that led the earlier UMG and Concord cases, signaling they’re prepared for a lengthy battle.

The complaint also demands that all infringing copies be destroyed and that Anthropic provide a complete accounting of Claude’s training data.