Elvis Presley Catalog Owners Sue AI Company Anthropic for Copyright Infringement
The lawsuit claims Anthropic illegally used 274 songs by The King to train its AI model Claude
In a significant copyright infringement lawsuit, the licensing group Authentic Brands Group has filed a $41 million claim against AI company Anthropic. Based in Tennessee, Authentic Brands Group asserts that Anthropic violated their copyright by using 274 of Elvis Presley's songs, including "Can't Help Falling in Love" and "Don't Be Cruel," to train its AI model Claude without permission.
The lawsuit, filed on October 23, seeks roughly $150,000 in damages per song, totaling $41 million. Authentic Brands Group joins several other co-plaintiffs with ownership of Presley rights in this legal action. Legal representative Richard Busch emphasizes that this lawsuit aims to protect the exclusive rights of the Elvis Plaintiffs, who are protective of these iconic songs.
Anthropic, known for building its business model on copyright infringement, faces the allegation of creating unlicensed derivative works with Claude. Despite past claims, the lawsuit continues to assert that Claude still infringes upon the copyrighted songs even after implementing "guardrails." When questioned to recreate specific songs, Claude admitted that the outputs closely resemble the original, utilizing the same structure, hooks, and verse/chorus/bridge sets, which the lawsuit argues crosses the line from "inspired by" to reproducing the copyrighted song.
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