Authentic Brands Group, which manages the rights to Elvis Presley's music, has filed a lawsuit against artificial intelligence company Anthropic, alleging copyright violations. The company claims Anthropic used 274 Elvis songs to train its AI model, Claude, without obtaining the necessary licenses.
In the legal complaint filed on Friday, Authentic Brands Group stated that the AI company has built its business model on copyright infringement. The lawsuit asserts that the songs, including hits like "All Shook Up," "Can't Help Falling in Love," "A Little Less Conversation," "Don't Be Cruel," and "Return To Sender," were used to create "unlicensed derivative works."
The Elvis plaintiffs are seeking up to $150,000 per infringed song, potentially totaling $41 million. The suit references an instance where Claude, when asked to recreate specific songs for a modern audience, admitted that its renditions were very close to the originals, stating, "These renders keep landing very close to the originals: same structure, same hooks reused with light rewording, and full sets of verses/choruses/bridges." The plaintiffs argue this goes beyond inspiration and constitutes reproduction of copyrighted material.
This is not the first time Anthropic has faced copyright infringement claims related to its AI training data. The company is also being sued by music company Reservoir for allegedly stealing lyrics and by Universal Music Group. These cases are ongoing.
Last year, Anthropic agreed to pay $1.5 billion to settle a class-action lawsuit filed by authors who accused the company of using their work to train its AI models. This settlement was reported as the largest publicly disclosed copyright recovery in history.
A spokesperson for Anthropic told BBC News, "We disagree with the claims and intend to defend this case fully."