BMG sues Anthropic over use of Rolling Stones, Bruno Mars lyrics in AI training

BMG sues Anthropic over use of Rolling Stones, Bruno Mars lyrics in AI training

The lawsuit is among the many filed by authors, news outlets, and copyright owners against tech companies

International music company BMG Rights Management has sued artificial intelligence (AI) company Anthropic in the U.S. District Court in California for the alleged use of its copyrighted lyrics to train the large language models powering the Claude chatbot.

Owned by German media group Bertelsmann, BMG cited 493 examples of copyrights that Anthropic allegedly infringed. It complained that Anthropic reproduced lyrics from hit songs of the Rolling Stones, Bruno Mars, Ariana Grande and other prominent rock and pop musicians.

The company’s statement read: "Anthropic’s practice of training AI models on copyrighted works sourced from unauthorized torrent sites, among other acts, stands in direct opposition to the standards required of any responsible ⁠participant in the AI community.”

If the courts find the infringement wilful, statutory damages ⁠under U.S. laws range from hundreds of dollars up to $150,000 per work.

Meanwhile, AI companies have argued that they make fair use of copyrighted material by reinventing the content.

The lawsuit is among the many filed by authors, news outlets, and copyright owners against tech companies for using their work in training the models behind their chatbots.

In 2023, a related lawsuit was filed (which is ongoing) by BMG’s rival Universal Music Group and other music companies against Anthropic.

In 2025, Anthropic settled another AI training lawsuit for $1.5 billion filed by a group of authors.