Complaint Filed August 28 In US District Court Northern District California Dario Amodei And Benjamin Mann Named As Defendants Beatles Taylor Swift Michael Jackson Hundreds Of Artists Named Anthropic’s Claude Boasted Having “Extensive Database Of Song Lyrics”
According to Al Jazeera, Axios and MusicTimes, Sony Music Publishing and Warner Chappell Music filed a lawsuit on August 28, 2026, in the US District Court for the Northern District of California against Anthropic, CEO Dario Amodei and co-founder Benjamin Mann, alleging that the company engaged in one of the largest copyright violations in history by pirating song lyrics and sheet music to train its Claude AI models.
The complaint alleges Anthropic illegally torrented, scraped and downloaded copyrighted works on a massive scale to develop and operate its Claude models without paying licensing fees. Named compositions include songs by the Beatles, Taylor Swift and Michael Jackson. The plaintiffs note that Claude boasted in one output of having “an extensive database of songs and their lyrics,” and in another reproduced the full lyrics to the Beatles’ “I Am the Walrus.”
Sony and Warner are seeking statutory damages of up to $150,000 per work infringed for willful copyright violation, plus court orders barring Anthropic from future unauthorised use. The complaint states: “Anthropic clearly considers that to be just the cost of doing business given that its entire business model continues to be built on copyright theft” and adds that “$1.5 billion is obviously not a large enough settlement to deter infringing conduct by a company that has parlayed such mass infringement into a staggering two-trillion-dollar valuation.”
The suit joins Universal Music Group’s separate 2023 and 2026 actions against Anthropic, and BMG Rights Management’s March 2026 lawsuit. Anthropic said: “We disagree with the publishers’ claims and we intend to defend ourselves robustly in court,” arguing courts have found AI training falls under fair use.
The music industry is drawing a line. The AI industry says training is fair use. That question now has to be answered in court.
Check out our previous coverage of artificial intelligence on The Trusted Times.
