Music Giants Sue AI Company Over Song Lyrics

Two of the world's biggest music companies, Sony Music and Warner Music, have filed a lawsuit against Anthropic — the company behind Claude, a popular AI assistant (think of it like a smarter version of ChatGPT). The music labels claim that Anthropic downloaded and used millions of song lyrics to teach Claude how to work, without paying for permission or compensating the artists.

According to the lawsuit, when you ask Claude to provide song lyrics, it often reproduces them word-for-word or almost word-for-word. Songs mentioned in the case include "All I Want for Christmas Is You" by Mariah Carey, "Paper Rings" by Taylor Swift, and "Eye of the Tiger" by Survivor. The music companies say this is unfair because they lose money — websites that want to show song lyrics normally have to pay for a license to do so, but Claude gives them away for free.

The music industry argues that songwriting is creative work that deserves to be paid for. "Without copyright protection, the artists and record labels we represent could lose their income," the lawsuit states. Sony and Warner are asking Anthropic to stop the practice and pay damages.

This isn't the first time an AI company has faced this problem. Last year in Germany, AI company OpenAI lost a similar case brought by GEMA, a music rights organization, over its ChatGPT chatbot. In another recent case in the US, a judge approved a settlement of $1.5 billion (about €1.3 billion) in favor of writers whose books were used to train Claude without permission. Anthropic says it disagrees with the lawsuit and plans to defend itself in court.