Anthropic, the AI company behind the Claude chatbot, is facing a $3 billion lawsuit filed by a coalition of music publishers, including Universal Music Group, Concord Music Group, and ABKCO Music. The lawsuit, filed in the Northern District of California on January 28, 2026, accuses Anthropic of "flagrant piracy" and large-scale copyright infringement involving over 20,000 copyrighted songs.
The music publishers allege that Anthropic illegally downloaded copyrighted songs, sheet music, and lyrics to train its AI models. They claim this unauthorized use constitutes a direct infringement of their exclusive rights and undermines the music licensing market. The complaint states that Anthropic obtained these works through mass piracy, downloading millions of unauthorized copies from pirate library websites using BitTorrent.
The lawsuit is a significant escalation from a previous legal action filed in October 2023, which involved approximately 500 songs and sought $75 million in damages. The plaintiffs discovered the alleged torrenting activities during the discovery process of a separate case, Bartz v. Anthropic PBC, where authors accused the company of similar copyright violations. This discovery led to the filing of the new, larger lawsuit.
The music publishers' statement to Music Business Worldwide accuses Anthropic of "persistent and brazen infringement" of songwriters' compositions taken from notorious pirate sites. They also allege that Anthropic continues to violate these rights by exploiting lyrics in training new AI models without authorization and in the outputs generated by the models. The lawsuit identifies specific songs, including "Wild Horses," "Sweet Caroline," "Bennie and the Jets," "Eye of the Tiger," "Viva La Vida," and "Radioactive".
According to the filings, Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei and co-founder Benjamin Mann are named as defendants. The publishers allege that Mann personally engaged in illegal torrenting activities, and Amodei discussed and authorized this conduct.
Anthropic has previously argued that its use of copyrighted material for AI training constitutes "fair use". However, courts have ruled that while training AI models on copyrighted content is permissible, acquiring that content through piracy is not.
This lawsuit is one of many copyright-related suits filed against AI developers. In September 2025, Anthropic agreed to pay $1.5 billion to settle the Bartz v. Anthropic case, where authors alleged the company trained its models on illegally obtained books. The settlement allowed those affected to object until February 9, 2026.
The outcome of this case could have significant implications for the AI industry, potentially affecting how AI models are trained and the extent to which copyrighted material can be used without permission. The music publishers are seeking substantial damages, which could make this one of the largest copyright cases in U.S. history.
