Rolling Stones Songs: BMG Sues Anthropic for AI Training Use

BMG Rights Management, the music rights organization belonging to the German Bertelsmann group, has sued the AI company Anthropic in a California federal court. Anthropic is alleged to have used copyrighted song lyrics to train its AI chatbot, Claude.

In the lawsuit filed Tuesday in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California in San Jose (Case No. 5:26-CV-02334), BMG accuses Anthropic of “widespread copyright infringement” “of copyrighted musical compositions owned or controlled by BMG,” including songs by the Rolling Stones, Bruno Mars, and other music greats. Anthropic allegedly copied and reproduced these without authorization, committing hundreds of copyright infringements.

Long List of Accusations

“To develop or 'train' its Claude models, Anthropic copied an enormous amount of text from internet sources in various ways,” the lawsuit states. This was done, among other things, through the use of automated scraping tools and by downloading files from illegal online libraries, according to the accusation. “Compounding this, Anthropic uploaded and publicly distributed further copies of these pirated works via torrent networks.”

Furthermore, Claude allegedly made unauthorized copies of BMG's copyrighted musical compositions and, based on user input, created and output unauthorized derivative works based on them. Anthropic also allegedly created and stored unauthorized copies of song lyrics in a central library. “Anthropic's mass reproduction of these works - without permission and regardless of whether individual works are used as input or output for Claude - constitutes a standalone copyright infringement,” BMG stated in the lawsuit. In addition to these numerous direct copyright infringements, the rights company accuses Anthropic of “contributory copyright infringement.” Anthropic is therefore also liable for the infringing actions of its licensees and users.

In the lawsuit, BMG is seeking an injunction and damages from Anthropic. The rights administrator cites hundreds of examples of copyright infringements allegedly committed by the AI company. Statutory damages for copyright infringement under U.S. law can range from up to $150,000 per infringed work if the court deems the infringement willful.

Record Labels vs. AI Companies

BMG's lawsuit against Anthropic is one of several similar proceedings initiated by authors, media companies, and other copyright holders against tech corporations for using their works to train their AI chatbots. Just last week, the online encyclopedia Britannica and its subsidiary Merriam-Webster sued ChatGPT developer OpenAI in a Manhattan federal court for “massive copyright infringement” in training its AI models.

Early last year, Anthropic and several record labels in the U.S. reached a court settlement in a copyright dispute. In it, the AI company stated that its AI models would no longer output copyrighted song lyrics or use them as a basis for producing similar texts. The dispute over whether music and lyrics may be used for training AI models remained open. Universal Music, Concord Music, ABKCO, which also represents the Rolling Stones, and several other companies in the industry had taken legal action against Anthropic in the fall of 2023. Anthropic allegedly ingested massive amounts of copyrighted song lyrics without authorization for the training and output of its AI model Claude, the accusation stated. This strongly resembles the allegations now made by BMG against Anthropic.

• BMG Rights Management v. Anthropic Lawsuit

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