The owners of the music rights to Britney Spears and Madonna have filed a lawsuit against Anthropic

The music publishing divisions of Sony Music and Warner Music have filed a lawsuit against Anthropic, the most valuable startup in the artificial intelligence sector, in a federal court in California. The complaint is dated August 28, 2026. The companies accused the AI developer of unlawfully using song lyrics and sheet music to train its model, Claude, according to Reuters.

Among the artists Sony Music works with are Britney Spears, Tate McRae, and SZA. Warner Music owns the rights to the music of Madonna, Bruno Mars, and Miley Cyrus.

Sony and Warner allege that Anthropic illegally downloaded more than 7 million pirated books via torrent sites, including licensed works by The Beatles, Taylor Swift, Bon Jovi, and many other musicians, which included copyrighted lyrics and copies of sheet music. The plaintiffs allege that the model is capable of reproducing protected texts “word for word” if asked to do so. Furthermore, according to the publishers, the company used their materials to teach Claude to “generate vast amounts of supposedly ‘new’ AI-generated song lyrics” that compete with legitimate works and even replace them on the market.

The two companies are seeking damages of up to $150,000 for each instance of copyright infringement, as well as an injunction preventing Anthropic from using their works.

"This is already the third lawsuit filed by the same lawyers, who are reusing allegations from lawsuits already pending in court," an Anthropic spokesperson said in a statement to Reuters. He added that the startup will defend itself and that training AI models involves the fair use of copyrighted material.

Representatives and a lawyer for Sony Music and Warner Music did not respond to inquiries from Reuters.

The lawsuits filed by Sony Music and Warner Music against Anthropic have become the latest example in a wave of legal actions brought against technology companies by copyright holders over the use of their works to train AI, Reuters reports. Universal Music Group, which owns the rights to the music of Taylor Swift, Rihanna, and Billie Eilish, filed lawsuits against Anthropic in 2023 and 2026; these cases are still pending in court, Reuters notes.

In 2025, Anthropic became the first AI company to settle one of these lawsuits, agreeing to pay $1.5 billion as part of a class-action lawsuit filed by a group of authors.

"Anthropic apparently considers this simply the cost of doing business, given that its entire business model continues to be built on copyright infringement. And $1.5 billion is apparently not a large enough settlement amount to deter a company that, thanks to such massive infringements, has reached a staggering market valuation of $2 trillion, ”the lawsuit filed by Sony Music and Warner Music states.

This article was AI-translated and verified by a human editor