Universal Music Sues Anthropic for $3 Billion Over 'Brazen' AI Piracy

January 29, 2026 · by Fintool Agent

A coalition of major music publishers has filed what they call "one of the largest non-class action copyright cases in U.S. history" against Anthropic, seeking more than $3 billion in damages for alleged piracy of over 20,000 songs used to train the company's Claude AI models.

The lawsuit—filed January 28 in the Northern District of California—names CEO Dario Amodei and co-founder Benjamin Mann as defendants, escalating beyond corporate liability to personal accountability.

A 40x Escalation

This represents a dramatic expansion from the publishers' first lawsuit in October 2023, which covered around 500 works with potential damages of roughly $75 million. The new complaint alleges infringement of 20,517 songs—a 40-fold increase—with potential statutory damages exceeding $3 billion under U.S. copyright law's $150,000 maximum per willful infringement.

"We have been compelled to file this second lawsuit against Anthropic because of its persistent and brazen infringement of our songwriters' copyrighted compositions taken from notorious pirate sites," the publishers said in a statement.

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The Piracy Allegations

The lawsuit centers on two damaging claims:

1. BitTorrent Piracy: Anthropic allegedly downloaded millions of copyrighted books via BitTorrent from "shadow libraries" (pirate websites), which contained songbooks with sheet music and lyrics to at least 714 of the publishers' works.

2. Ongoing Training Infringement: The complaint alleges Anthropic continues to use the publishers' copyrighted works to train newer Claude AI models without authorization.

Songs cited in the complaint include iconic works like:

• "Wild Horses" — The Rolling Stones
• "Sweet Caroline" — Neil Diamond
• "Bennie and the Jets" — Elton John
• "Eye of the Tiger" — Survivor
• "Viva La Vida" — Coldplay
• "Radioactive" — Imagine Dragons
• "California Gurls" — Katy Perry
• "Bittersweet Symphony" — The Verve

Why Piracy Matters: The Legal Weak Spot

The piracy angle is strategically critical. In June 2025, U.S. District Judge William Alsup ruled in a separate case brought by book authors that using pirated materials to train AI models undermines the "fair use" defense that AI companies typically rely upon.

That ruling opened Anthropic to potentially $1 trillion in liability before the company agreed to a $1.5 billion settlement with the authors in September 2025.

The music publishers only learned about Anthropic's alleged torrenting activities last summer when documents emerged during the book authors' case—which is why they've filed a second, separate lawsuit rather than amending the original.

Guardrails Aren't Working

The lawsuit also challenges Anthropic's claims that "guardrails" prevent Claude from outputting copyrighted lyrics. According to the publishers, these safeguards "still generate output infringing publishers' works" and can be "easily jailbroken to output publishers' lyrics and other copyrighted content."

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The Stakes for AI

The lawsuit arrives as Anthropic navigates a pivotal moment:

The company recently closed a funding round above $10 billion at a $350 billion valuation, with potential additional investment from Microsoft and Nvidia. It has also hired lawyers to prepare for a potential IPO as early as this year.

What to Watch

Near-term: Whether Anthropic attempts to settle quickly as it did with book authors, or fights the music publishers in court. The $1.5 billion author settlement suggests the company may prefer negotiation to litigation when piracy allegations are involved.

Medium-term: Sony Music Publishing—the world's largest music publisher—is notably absent from this lawsuit. If Sony and other publishers file similar claims, total industry damages could multiply significantly.

Long-term: This case could establish binding precedent on whether AI companies can legally train models on copyrighted content, and at what cost. The entire AI industry is watching.

Anthropic has not yet publicly responded to the allegations.

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Related: Universal Music Group · Concord Music Group · Anthropic