Sony and Warner music publishers sue Anthropic over alleged use of song lyrics and sheet music to train Claude

What happened: On Friday, August 28, 2026, the music publishing branches of Sony Music and Warner Music sued Anthropic in California federal court, alleging the company pirated hundreds of song lyrics and sheet music, from artists including The Beatles, Taylor Swift, and Michael Jackson, through torrent downloads to train its Claude AI models. The complaint alleges Claude can reproduce copyrighted lyrics verbatim when prompted and that Anthropic used the lyrics to generate "vast quantities" of new AI-generated song lyrics that compete with the publishers' works as harmful market substitutes. The publishers seek up to $150,000 per infringed copyright and a court order barring Anthropic from using their works. Anthropic called it the third lawsuit from the same lawyers recycling allegations from cases already before the courts and said it would defend itself robustly on fair-use grounds.

Why it matters to creators: This is the music-publishing industry's direct test of whether training a chatbot on song lyrics and sheet music is fair use. The complaint explicitly frames AI-generated lyrics as market substitutes for human songwriting.

What is not yet known: No court has ruled; the case is at the pleading stage. Universal Music Group's earlier suits against Anthropic over lyrics (2023 and earlier in 2026) are still ongoing.