The owners of Elvis Presley’s music sued Anthropic, the company behind the Claude chatbot, alleging it used 274 of Presley’s songs to train its AI models without permission. The lawsuit seeks about $41 million in statutory damages.
The suit was filed Friday, October 23, in federal court by a subsidiary of Authentic Brands Group, which controls Presley’s name, image and likeness, along with other companies that hold rights to his music, Billboard reported. The songs named include “Can’t Help Falling in Love,” “A Little Less Conversation,” “Don’t Be Cruel,” “All Shook Up,” and “Return to Sender.”
The complaint alleges Anthropic used copyrighted compositions and lyrics without licensing them, and that Claude can generate unauthorized versions of existing songs. Lead attorney Richard Busch said the plaintiffs are deeply protective of the songs, and alleged Anthropic built its business model on copyright infringement at a scale never seen before.
The plaintiffs seek up to $150,000 per song, the maximum statutory damages for willful infringement under US copyright law. They also asked for a court order barring further infringement and requiring Anthropic to destroy unauthorized copies of the works.
Anthropic has not publicly responded to the suit, according to reports. The company has previously maintained that training AI models on copyrighted material can be protected under US fair use law.
The case joins earlier copyright claims against Anthropic from music publishers including Universal Music Publishing, Concord and BMG, each alleging lyrics were used in Claude’s development.
Source: NME
