Calling it “one of the largest and most blatant ongoing thefts of intellectual property in history”, Sony Music Publishing and Warner Chappell Music have filed a lawsuit against Anthropic co-founders Dario Amodei and Benjamin Mann for allegedly illegally downloading their copyrighted music works to train Claude series of AI models.

In a lawsuit filed at the US District Courts Northern District of California on August 28, the plaintiff Sony Music Publishing and Warner Chappell Music have accused the defendants of running a “brazen campaign of illegally torrenting, scraping, and downloading copyrighted works on a massive scale in order to develop, operate, and reap enormous profits from Anthropic’s “Claude” series of AI models.”

The lawsuit by Sony Music and Warner Chappell Music stems from a recent copyright settlement case, Bartz versus Anthropic, in which the AI company settled for a $1.5 billion compensation covering almost half a million copyrighted works (482,460 eligible works).

According to plaintiff, in the Bartz versus Anthropic copyright case, the eligible works in question also comprised of “books containing the lyrics and sheet music to hundreds or more of Music Publishers’ copyrighted musical compositions…that include “Livin’ On a Prayer,” “September,” “Great Balls of Fire,” “Ramblin’ Man,” and “Hallelujah.”

The music publishing groups have alleged that Anthropic “illegally harvested” Innumerable copyrighted songs including “Ain’t No Mountain High Enough,” “All I Want for Christmas is You,” “Eye of the Tiger,” “Here Comes Santa Claus,” and “Paper Rings” to train their Claude family of models.

Sony and Warner Chappell groups have alleged that both Amodei and Mann were personally responsible for illegally downloading millions of copyrighted books using torrent services.

Also Read: With Anthropic, AI Companies are Finally Realizing How It Feels to be Scraped