Independent music publisher Round Hill Music sued Anthropic and Suno in California federal court on Monday, alleging the AI companies misused hundreds of its songs to train their systems.
Round Hill said in its complaint against Anthropic that the company used lyrics from at least 500 songs that the publisher has rights to — including music from James Brown, The Kinks and the Goo Goo Dolls — to help teach its chatbot Claude to respond to human prompts. The publisher alleged that Suno used the same songs to train its AI-powered music generation system.
Round Hill told the court in both cases that it may eventually add "ten thousand or more" compositions to the lawsuits, seeking damages that could "potentially approach or conceivably exceed $1 billion."
Spokespeople for Anthropic and Suno did not immediately respond to requests for comment on the case.
"We intend to take these cases to trial and to hold these companies accountable, and we will not accept a resolution that leaves songwriters and artists deprived of their rightful share of compensation," Round Hill CEO Josh Gruss said in a statement.
Round Hill's lawsuits add to dozens of cases pitting copyright owners such as authors and news outlets against tech giants including OpenAI, Microsoft and Meta Platforms over the training of their AI systems.
Amazon-backed Anthropic was the first major AI company to settle one of the cases, agreeing last year to pay a group of authors $1.5 billion to resolve a class-action lawsuit.
Anthropic is facing separate lawsuits from Universal Music Group (UMG.AS), BMG Rights Management and others for allegedly misusing thousands of their song lyrics for AI training. Suno is also facing separate lawsuits from UMG and Sony Music (6758.T) over its AI training.
The cases are Round Hill Music LP v. Anthropic PBC, U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, No. 5:26-cv-08505 and Round Hill Music LP v. Suno Inc, U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, No. 5:26-cv-08507.
For Round Hill: Richard Busch of Adams & Reese; and Jeffrey Faucette of Skaggs Faucette
For Anthropic and Suno: not yet available
Read more:
BMG sues Anthropic for using Bruno Mars, Rolling Stones lyrics in AI training
Anthropic seeks pivotal court win in music publisher lawsuit over AI training
Warner Music Group settles copyright case with Suno for licensed AI music
