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

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

Sat, August 29, 2026 at 7:10 PM GMT+3 2 min read

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.

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