Music publisher BMG Rights Management has sued artificial intelligence startup Anthropic in U.S. federal court in California, alleging that Anthropic used copyrighted song lyrics to train the large language models that power its Claude chatbot. According to the complaint filed on Tuesday, BMG says Anthropic copied and reproduced lyrics from hit songs by artists including the Rolling Stones, Bruno Mars and Ariana Grande, among other well-known rock and pop musicians.
The filing asserts that the company infringed hundreds of copyrights and specifically cites 493 examples that BMG contends were used without authorization. Under U.S. copyright law, statutory damages for infringement can vary widely - from several hundred dollars to as much as $150,000 per work if a court determines the violation was willful.
This action is part of a broader string of high-profile legal challenges brought by authors, news organizations and other copyright holders against technology companies that have used proprietary material to train large language models and related chatbots. BMG noted that its lawsuit follows similar litigation from multiple rights owners that question how training data has been collected and employed.
Universal Music Group - identified in the filing as a competitor of BMG - and other music publishers previously filed a related case against Anthropic in 2023 that remains active. Separately, Anthropic reached a settlement last year in a different AI training dispute brought by a group of authors, resolving that matter for $1.5 billion.
Requests for comment sent to spokespeople for the companies did not receive immediate replies on Wednesday, according to court filings and correspondence cited in the complaint. In public defenses of their practices, many AI developers have argued that use of copyrighted works in model training can qualify as fair use because the material is transformed in the process of creating new outputs.
Beyond the legal claims, the broader market has seen observers and services that evaluate music and technology companies spotlight questions about how such litigation might affect commercial valuations and investment decisions. For example, some AI-driven stock-analysis services highlight whether major music companies such as Universal Music Group are included in strategy portfolios; those services also point to past stock performance examples when discussing risk and opportunity in the sector.
Legal posture and next steps
BMG's complaint demands relief for the alleged infringements and frames the matter as one of unauthorized copying of creative works. The case will proceed through the federal court system, where the parties may exchange discovery, and judges will evaluate the factual record and the parties' legal arguments concerning copyright law and potential defenses such as fair use.