Elvis still taking care of business as lawsuit alleges Anthropic used his songs to train AI

The people and organizations that own the rights to Elvis Presley's music have sued Anthropic for more than $41 million US. They accuse the artificial intelligence company of using songs by the King of Rock and Roll without permission to train its AI models. They say the company violated copyright on an enormous scale.

A group of music and entertainment companies, trusts and individuals owns the rights to 274 songs recorded and made famous by the American music star Presley. The group filed the lawsuit on Friday in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California and asked for a jury trial.

The lawsuit comes as the AI company filed documents on Monday for what could become the biggest stock market launch ever. It also comes amid growing warnings in recent months about the dangers of developing AI without enough limits. Anthropic's CEO has also warned that uncontrolled AI development could put humanity at risk.

Almost 50 years after Presley's death in 1977, his music remains influential and people still stream his songs, the plaintiffs said in their filing. They listed many of his hits, including All Shook Up, Can't Help Falling in Love, A Little Less Conversation, Don't Be Cruel and (You're the) Devil In Disguise.

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The lawsuit describes the collection of songs as an iconic group of works that includes some of the most important, influential and long-lasting musical compositions in history.

The plaintiffs say Anthropic knowingly and deliberately violated copyright while developing its Claude AI system, which can generate text and other content. They accuse the company of copying song lyrics from authorized websites on the internet. They also say it deliberately removed copyright information, including the names of songwriters, composers and music publishers. The plaintiffs claim Anthropic then built a database of copied material and used it to train its AI models.

The lawsuit says Anthropic has made some changes to stop people from using Claude to create music that violates copyright. However, the plaintiffs claim the chatbot is still producing content that does so.

The plaintiffs asked Claude to recreate specific songs "for a modern audience." They said the chatbot gave the following response:

"These versions keep coming out very close to the originals: the same structure, the same hooks reused with small changes to the wording, and complete sets of verses, choruses and bridges. That goes beyond being 'inspired by' a song and starts reproducing the copyrighted song, even when some words are changed," the filing states.

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The plaintiffs accuse Anthropic of directly violating copyright, getting around copyright protection measures, and removing or changing copyright information. They are seeking more than $41 million in damages. All dollar amounts are in U.S. dollars.

"We disagree with the claims and intend to defend this case fully," an Anthropic spokesperson told Reuters.

Lawsuits from creators and rights-holders

The lawsuit is the latest in a growing number of legal cases brought by writers, news organizations, visual artists, musicians and music publishers. They accuse AI companies of using copyrighted material to train AI systems that create new content.

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A best-selling author from Vancouver has started a class-action lawsuit against NVIDIA, Meta and two other major technology companies. J.B. MacKinnon says they illegally used books written by him and other Canadian authors to train AI models.

The companies have argued that using copyrighted material to create new content is allowed under fair use rules.

In 2023, a group of music publishers sued Anthropic. They accused the company of violating copyright by using song lyrics from many famous artists, including the Rolling Stones, Bruno Mars, the Beach Boys and Beyoncé, to train Claude.

The Presley lawsuit refers to an expert witness who worked for the music publishers in the 2023 case. The expert found several examples of Claude giving users lyrics from copyrighted songs word for word, or almost word for word. This sometimes happened even when users did not directly ask for the lyrics, such as when they asked for a song "in the style of" a particular artist.

The federal case is still ongoing in the Northern District of California after a judge approved its transfer from Tennessee in mid-2024.

Also in 2023, a group of authors filed a class-action lawsuit against Anthropic. They accused the company of using pirated copies of their books to train Claude without permission. This past July, a U.S. judge approved a $1.5 billion settlement in that case.