Sony, Warner Sue Anthropic Over What They Call ‘One of the Largest Ongoing Intellectual Property Thefts in History’
Sony Music and Warner Music are suing Anthropic over alleged copyright issues in what they consider one of the largest and most blatant ongoing thefts of intellectual property in history. Filed in California on August 28, the complaint alleges that Anthropic illegally downloaded heaps of copyrighted material to train its AI systems. Anthropic and its cofounders, Dario Amodei and Benjamin Mann, are listed as defendants.
The lawsuit covers 10,000 musical works, including popular songs like Survivor’s “Eye of the Tiger,” Mariah Carey’s “All I Want for Christmas Is You,” and Taylor Swift’s “Paper Rings.” The complaint further states that Mann downloaded over 5 million pirated books from Library Genesis in June 2021, and that Anthropic employees downloaded at least 2 million more in July 2022. Those books contained lyrics and sheet music used in Anthropic’s model training.
Sony and Warner are claiming up to $150,000 for each instance of willful copyright infringement and up to $25,000 for each instance in which copyright information was removed from a work. With so many works allegedly violated, potential damages run into the billions. Friday’s filing requests a jury trial, an injunction, destruction of infringing copies, and details on Claude’s training data.
Not surprisingly, Anthropic says it disagrees with the publishers’ claims and intends to defend itself in court.
At least it’s not the first AI company accused of stealing artists’ music.
