Music publisher Round Hill sues Anthropic and Suno over AI training with 500+ songs

Round Hill Music, the independent publisher sitting on a catalog worth $1.1 billion, has filed copyright infringement lawsuits against both Anthropic and Suno, alleging the AI companies helped themselves to lyrics from more than 500 songs without bothering to ask. The twin lawsuits, filed on August 17 in the US District Court for the Northern District of California, target two very different corners of the AI world. Anthropic builds Claude, a general-purpose chatbot. Suno builds an AI music generator. Both, according to Round Hill, share a common trait: they allegedly trained on copyrighted material they never licensed. What Round Hill is claiming The cases, filed under case numbers 5:26-cv-08505 and 5:26-cv-08507, center on a straightforward allegation. Round Hill says both companies ingested lyrics from at least 500 titles in its portfolio to improve their respective AI models. That portfolio isn’t exactly obscure. Round Hill’s catalog includes works from James Brown, The Kinks, and the Goo Goo Dolls. Think “Get Up (I Feel Like Being a) Sex Machine,” “You Really Got Me,” and “Iris.” For Anthropic, the accusation is that Claude’s ability to reproduce or reference song lyrics stems...