The Goo Goo Dolls perform at a concert in 2023. Two of their hits, “Iris” and “Slide,” are at the heart of a $1 billion lawsuit brought by publisher Round Hill Music against AI company, Anthropic, which operates the Claude family of AI models.
SAN FRANCISCO — Round Hill, one of the world's top publishers of independent music, has become the latest to demand a billion dollar payout from AI creator Anthropic, as well as from generative music creation site Suno, accusing the companies of allegedly ripping off Round Hill's music holdings to train their artificial intelligence programs.
Round Hill Music and several affiliated companies filed the lawsuit on Aug. 17 in San Francisco federal court.
"We are not against artificial intelligence," said Josh Gruss, CEO and founder of Round Hill Music in a statement announcing the lawsuit.
"We are against the idea that you can build a business worth billions on top of other people's creative work and pay the creators nothing."
The lawsuit is just the most recent in a growing series of actions launched by authors, music rights owners and others, accusing AI companies, and Anthropic, in particular, of violating their copyrights in building their AI products and creating "multi-billion dollar businesses" in the process.
In July, for instance, a federal judge in San Francisco signed off on a $1.5 billion settlement to settle a sprawling consolidated legal action on behalf of thousands of authors who claimed Anthropic had pirated their works to develop and refine its Claude family of Large Language Model (LLM) AI models.
Specifically, the authors accused Anthropic of allegedly using their work to help the Claude AIs better respond to queries with "lifelike, complex, and useful text responses."
As that litigation wound down, however, Anthropic also faced mounting high-stakes lawsuits from music producers and publishers, who similarly accused the company copyright violations.
A coalition of music publishers hit Anthropic filed suit in 2023, and then significantly expanded their legal claims in January 2026. The companies, including Universal Music Publishing Group, Concord Music Group and ABKCO Music, say Anthropic owes them $3 billion for allegedly pirating more than 20,000 songs.
Now, Round Hill Music has leveled its own claims, which it says is worth at least $1 billion.
Round Hill is a private equity company that since 2010 has held rights to a portfolio of hit songs and other musical works which it says is worth $1.1 billion.
Round Hill says some of the songs in its portfolio that allegedly have been infringed include "Iris" by The Goo Goo Dolls; "Total Eclipse of the Heart," by Bonnie Tyler and Jim Steinman; and James Brown's "I Got You (I Feel Good)." Round Hill says those three works alone have been streamed more than 6 billion times.
Other works referenced in the Round Hill lawsuit include "Slide" by the Goo Goo Dolls; "Good Lovin'" by the Rascals; "Lola" by the Kinks; and "Got My Mind Set On You," "made famous by James Ray and George Harrison," among others.
In all, the company is asserting claims to protect its copyright to more than 14,000 "musical compositions" and 16,000 "sound recordings."
The lawsuit asserts Anthropic and Suno allegedly improperly used the Round Hill works to help their AI products learn to make music by "mimicking" the great human musical artists of the past and present day.
"... Anthropic has essentially put to test the adage of whether monkeys and typewriters could, provided enough time, recreate 'Hamlet,'" wrote Round Hill in its complaint.
"However, rather than wait out the 'infinite' amount of time that theorem posits is necessary for said monkeys with typewriters to randomly, one letter at a time, string together that famous question of 'To be or not to be?', Anthropic found a work around. Rather than training its monkeys (the AI Models) from first principles, Anthropic found mimicry (i.e. copyright infringement) to be the much easier pursuit," Round Hill wrote.
The lawsuit claims Anthropic, in particular, has known since at least 2024 that its practices allegedly violated Round Hill's copyrights.
Anthropic and Suno have not yet responded to Round Hill's lawsuit in court.
Round Hill is represented by attorney Richard S. Busch and others with the firms of Adams & Reese, of Nashville, Tennessee, and Skaggs Faucette, of San Francisco.
