Sony and Warner have filed a lawsuit against Anthropic regarding the use of copyrighted music in the training of Claude, aiming for $150,000 for each track.

      Anthropic's Claude models are said to have learned to generate lyrics by unlawfully accessing songs that Sony and Warner are now seeking compensation for.

      This isn't the first instance of a music publisher suing a major AI company, but the magnitude is certainly noteworthy. Sony Music and Warner Chappell have initiated extensive lawsuits against Anthropic.

      The publishers allege that Anthropic illegally used thousands of copyrighted songs to train Claude (as reported by Business Insider). This chatbot has gained popularity for its precision and capability in managing intricate tasks.

      What exactly do Sony and Warner assert?

      The companies submitted a 48-page lawsuit late Friday in a federal court in Northern California, claiming this represents one of the largest and most egregious ongoing violations of intellectual property rights (protected under copyright and not permitted for commercial use without authorization) in history.

      The primary allegation noted in the lawsuit is that Claude can produce nearly identical or even exact replicas of lyrics from copyrighted songs. The publishers contend that this output directly competes with the original, human-written songs used for training the chatbot. Anthropic, along with CEO Dario Amodei and co-founder Benjamin Mann, is named as a defendant.

      The specific songs listed in the filing cover several decades: Survivor’s “Eye of the Tiger,” Marvin Gaye’s “Ain’t No Mountain High Enough,” Mariah Carey’s “All I Want for Christmas Is You,” Taylor Swift’s “Paper Rings,” and Bon Jovi’s “Livin’ on a Prayer.”

      Sony and Warner accuse Anthropic of obtaining lyrics and sheet music through unauthorized sources such as Library Genesis and Pirate Library Mirror.

      What is the extent of the damage claim?

      As stated in the lawsuit, both music publishers are demanding a jury trial against Anthropic. Additionally, they are pursuing statutory damages of up to $150,000 for each plagiarized or copied composition.

      While it may seem exaggerated, $150,000 multiplied by the tens of thousands of songs allegedly pirated or utilized for training a chatbot amounts to a potentially staggering total. Although Anthropic has not publicly responded to the lawsuit, a statement is anticipated soon due to the magnitude of the claimed damages.

      As previously mentioned, this isn't the first time a publisher has taken legal action against an AI firm. Recently, Anthropic agreed to pay authors and publishers $1.5 billion to settle a separate class-action lawsuit related to pirated books, which was reported to be the largest copyright settlement in U.S. history at that time.

      In addition, music publisher BMG has filed a separate lawsuit against Anthropic, although that case involves a comparatively limited 493 compositions, unlike this new lawsuit's much broader scope. Anthropic is not alone in facing such accusations; OpenAI has encountered similar allegations from organizations like The New York Times and Encyclopedia Britannica.