The complaint names Anthropic, chief executive Dario Amodei and co-founder Benjamin Mann. The publishers allege that copyrighted lyrics and other musical material were obtained through torrenting, scraping, downloading and other methods and used in the development and training of Claude.
Anthropic disputes the claims and says it intends to defend itself in court.
The case includes some of the world's best-known songs, including Mariah Carey's 'All I Want for Christmas is You', 'Ain't No Mountain High Enough', Survivor's 'Eye of the Tiger', Bon Jovi's 'Livin' on a Prayer', Mark Ronson and Bruno Mars' 'Uptown Funk' and Katy Perry's 'California Gurls'.
What the Anthropic Copyright Lawsuit Alleges
The publishers describe the alleged conduct in unusually strong terms, calling it 'one of the largest and most blatant ongoing thefts of intellectual property in history'. That is the plaintiffs' characterisation and has not been established by a court.
According to the complaint, Anthropic allegedly obtained copyrighted material from both unauthorised and legitimate online sources.
The publishers specifically point to lyric websites including Musixmatch and LyricFind, as well as datasets associated with Common Crawl. They also allege that copyrighted material appeared in books obtained from pirate websites.
The complaint refers to at least seven million copies of books allegedly downloaded in connection with Anthropic's earlier training practices. The publishers say some of those books contained song lyrics and sheet music.
The figure comes against the background of Anthropic's separate dispute with authors, which resulted in a $1.5 billion settlement, worth roughly £1.12 billion, that received final court approval in July.
The music publishers further allege that Anthropic removed identifying information from some works during processing. They argue that altering such information could deprive copyright owners of attribution and other protections.
The publishers are seeking statutory damages of up to $150,000, around £112,000, for each work they claim was wilfully infringed, as well as up to $25,000, or roughly £19,000, for each alleged violation involving the removal or alteration of copyright-management information.
The latest case is not Anthropic's first legal fight over music. Universal Music Publishing Group, Concord Music Group and other publishers previously sued the company over alleged use of copyrighted lyrics.
That litigation has already produced several court rulings, including decisions affecting individual claims, while copyright allegations concerning Anthropic's use of musical works remain part of the broader dispute.
AI Music Copyright Battles Are Growing
The Anthropic dispute arrives as music companies and artists increasingly challenge how generative AI systems obtain training material.
In Germany, music rights organisation GEMA won a copyright case against AI music generator Suno on 31 July, when the Munich Regional Court largely upheld claims concerning six musical works, including Boney M's 'Daddy Cool', Alphaville's 'Forever Young' and Lou Bega's 'Mambo No. 5'.
Those cases are separate from Anthropic's dispute, although they form part of a wider series of legal challenges concerning how AI companies use music and the identities of musicians.
The German case concerns copyright, while the Massachusetts lawsuit against Suno centres on allegations involving artists' names, identities and likenesses rather than copyright infringement.
Suno is also facing another lawsuit from musicians including Jason Isbell, David Lowery, Guy Forsyth and Eduardo Calle.
Filed in Massachusetts, the case alleges that Suno allows users to generate music associated with particular artists and, in doing so, commercially exploits their names, identities or likenesses without authorisation. Suno denies the allegations.
