Universal Music Group (UMG) has initiated a lawsuit against Anthropic, the developer behind Claude AI. This significant legal proceeding marks the initial major confrontation between the music industry and an AI developer. UMG, alongside prominent industry entities such as Concord Music Group, ABKCO, Worship Together Music, and Plaintiff Capital CMG, is pursuing $75 million in damages.

Anthropic, established in 2021 by former executives from OpenAI, has received financial backing from prominent companies, including Google, Salesforce, and Zoom. The company has successfully secured a total of $750 million in funding across two rounds since March and has garnered a valuation of $4.1 billion.

The lawsuit is primarily focused on the purported unauthorized utilization of copyrighted music by Anthropic for the training of its AI models. The music publishers allege that Anthropic unlawfully integrated songs from artists under their representation into its AI dataset without securing the required permissions.

Attorneys representing the publishers have stated that this legal action was initiated to rectify the "systematic and extensive infringement" of copyrighted song lyrics by Anthropic.