A coalition of music publishers, spearheaded by Concord Music Group and Universal Music Group, has initiated a groundbreaking lawsuit against AI company Anthropic, citing piracy related to the unauthorized downloading of over 20,000 copyrighted songs. This legal action, as reported by Reuters, accuses the company of illegally accessing not only the music itself but also associated sheet music and lyrics, incorporating these works into its AI chatbot, Claude, for training purposes.
The lawsuit highlights high-profile tracks from renowned artists such as The Rolling Stones, Neil Diamond, and Elton John, underscoring the scale of the infringement. Concord, representing a diverse roster of artists including Common, Killer Mike, and Korn, along with other publishers, estimates damages could exceed $3 billion. If successful, this could rank among the largest non-class action copyright cases in U.S. history.
The complaint describes Anthropic’s portrayal as an AI “safety and research” firm as misleading, asserting that its operations rely heavily on the illegal acquisition of copyrighted material. This lawsuit is filed by the same legal team involved in the prior Bartz v. Anthropic case, where the courts ruled Anthropic illegally downloaded works while training its models. That case resulted in a settlement of $1.5 billion awarded to affected writers, concluding that while using copyrighted content for training was permissible, acquiring that content through piracy was not.
The current suit claims that Anthropic’s illegal practices continued during the discovery phase of the earlier case. As legal precedents indicate that simply compensating for copyrighted songs could have mitigated the issue, this situation brings into question Anthropic’s approach to sourcing content for its AI technologies. As the case unfolds, it promises to be a pivotal moment in the ongoing discourse surrounding copyright, artificial intelligence, and the music industry.
