Music publishers open a new copyright front against Anthropic

Song publishers led by Sony Music Publishing and Warner Chappell have sued Anthropic, alleging it obtained and copied tens of thousands of protected compositions—lyrics and sheet music, rather than recordings—to build and operate Claude. They say the company relied on torrenting, scraping, and pirate libraries, and that Claude can return near-identical material; Anthropic had not publicly responded when the suit was filed. The distinction matters because a federal court’s earlier ruling in an authors’ case treated AI training on lawfully acquired books differently from building a library from pirated copies. This lawsuit therefore sharpens the music business’s larger question: not simply whether AI can learn from songs, but whether its makers can show the underlying material was acquired and used lawfully.