Elvis Presley IP Owners Sue Anthropic Over Allegations of Copyright Infringement
Photo Credit: Elvis Presley by Rossano, aka Bud Care / CC by 2.0
The people and companies that own the rights to Elvis Presley’s work have sued Anthropic. They accuse the AI company of using 274 of his songs to train its AI models without permission.
AI company Anthropic is facing another lawsuit over claims that it broke copyright law. This time, the lawsuit says the company used 274 Elvis Presley songs to train its AI models without permission. The lawsuit was filed on Friday, October 23, by a company owned by Authentic Brands Group, which controls Elvis’s intellectual property, including rights to his name, image, and likeness. Other companies with interests in his music also joined the lawsuit.
According to the court filing, Anthropic used 274 songs linked to Presley, including some of his biggest hits. These songs include “All Shook Up,” “Can’t Help Falling in Love,” and “A Little Less Conversation.” The lawsuit claims that the company behind the Claude chatbot used copyrighted songs to train its AI models without permission or paying for a license. It also claims that the models can now create unauthorized versions of songs that already exist.
The court filing says Claude has continued to produce material that copies copyrighted work, even though Anthropic says it has added safety measures to stop its models from creating existing song lyrics or compositions. According to court documents, when Claude was asked to recreate songs “for a modern audience,” it produced material that closely resembled the original Elvis recordings.
Anthropic has not yet made a public statement about this lawsuit. However, the company has argued that using copyrighted material to train AI models can and should be protected under the fair use law in the United States.
The people and companies suing on behalf of Elvis Presley are asking for legal damages of up to $150,000 for each song that was infringed. For all 274 songs, the total could be about $41.1 million.
“The Elvis Plaintiffs bring this action to enforce these exclusive rights against the defendant that has built its entire business model based on copyright infringement at a scale never seen before,” said Richard Busch, the lead lawyer for the plaintiffs.
Busch previously represented Marvin Gaye’s estate in its lawsuit against Robin Thicke and Pharrell Williams over their 2013 hit “Blurred Lines.” The court ruled that the song had copied parts of Gaye’s 1977 song “Got to Give It Up.”
The lawsuit over Elvis Presley’s music is the latest in a growing number of legal cases against Anthropic. The AI company faces copyright infringement claims from several major names in the music industry, including Universal Music Publishing Group, Concord Music Group, Sony Music Publishing, and Warner Chappell Music.