Music publishers sue Anthropic, allege "blantant theft" of copyrighted music

Some of the world's largest music publishers filed a blockbuster lawsuit against Anthropic late Friday night, alleging "one of the largest and most blatant ongoing thefts of intellectual property in history." Why it matters: The suit is the opening salvo in what is now likely to be a yearslong fight over music, AI, and how intellectual property is protected in a new era of technology.

Driving the news: Units of Sony Music and Warner Music filed the suit in federal court in northern California late Friday night, naming Anthropic, CEO Dario Amodei and co-founder Benjamin Mann as defendants.

What they're saying: " Defendants Anthropic and its founders Dario Amodei and Benjamin Mann have conducted a brazen campaign of illegally torrenting, scraping, and downloading copyrighted works on a massive scale in order to develop, operate, and reap enormous profits from Anthropic's 'Claude' series of artificial intelligence ('AI') models," the plaintiffs write in the 48-page complaint.

They also claim that Anthropic pirated thousands of copyrighted musical works and ask for hundreds of thousands of dollars in damages per infringed work.

Between the lines: This suit is not the first time Anthropic has been accused of piracy to train its models.

In September 2025, the company agreed to the largest copyright settlement in U.S. history, a $1.5 billion deal with authors and publishers.

Yes, but: The music industry is notorious for being litigious when it comes to copyright, as anyone who was around in the heyday of Napster and LimeWire can attest.

For the record: Anthropic was not immediately available to comment on the suit.

Editor's note: This is a developing story.