Sony Music Publishing, Warner Chappell sue Anthropic over song lyrics in AI training data

Thirty-five music publishing companies, including Sony Music Publishing and Warner Chappell Music, filed a copyright complaint against Anthropic in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California on August 28, 2026. The suit alleges large-scale scraping, torrenting, and downloading of copyrighted musical compositions to train Anthropic's Claude AI models, without permission from the rightsholders.

The complaint names specific songs the publishers say were used without authorization, including "Eye of the Tiger," "September," "Uptown Funk," "Hallelujah," Taylor Swift's "Paper Rings," and Mariah Carey's "All I Want for Christmas Is You." The publishers allege Claude reproduces copyrighted lyrics in its outputs — the core claim underlying the suit.

What's being sought

The publishers are seeking statutory damages of up to $150,000 for each work found to have been willfully infringed, plus up to $25,000 for each instance of alleged removal or alteration of copyright management information. With tens of thousands of works reportedly at issue, industry coverage has characterized the potential exposure as running into the billions.

The context that matters

This isn't Anthropic's first copyright fight over AI training data. The company agreed to a $1.5 billion settlement with a group of authors and publishers earlier over allegations involving pirated books used in training — one of the largest payouts of its kind to date. This new suit brings the same basic legal theory into the music publishing world, where the stakes for entertainment industry dealmaking are direct: song rights are core assets for every major label and publisher this outlet covers.

Sources: TechCrunch, Music Business Worldwide.