AI is under legal attack again, and this time the intellectual property at the center of the case is not music, but lyrics.
Sony Music Publishing and Warner Chappell Music are teaming against AI company Anthropic and — notably — its CEO and co-founder Benjamin Mann.
At the center of this is an assertion that Anthropic scraped and downloaded loads of copyrighted song lyrics (as well as compositions and sheet music, which appear to be secondary in this case). The argument continues that Claude AI can reproduce the lyrics, and generate new songs with them — with obvious harmful consequences.
A few of the artists whose work is part of the case include Taylor Swift (if you’re going to do it, go big), The Beatles, Michael Jackson, and Mariah Carey.
The labels are asking for an injunction which would block these and other uses, obviously. In addition, the plaintiffs want statutory damages that could reach $150,000 per willful copyright infringement. We don’t even need paper and pencil to estimate potential payments in the billions.
There is precedent: Universal Music Group sued Anthropic and settled for $1.5 billion compensation. We also covered BMG going down the same legal path against Anthropic early this year:
BMG brings infringement lawsuit to Anthropic over AI training