{
  "id": 16715700,
  "title": "Elvis rightsholders sue Anthropic for stealing songs and leaving them in Heartbreak Hotel",
  "url": "https://urgent.news/2026/10/27/elvis-rightsholders-sue-anthropic-for-stealing-songs-and-leaving-them-16715700",
  "topic": "ai",
  "section": "AI",
  "published": "2026-10-27T05:39:18.000Z",
  "source": {
    "name": "The Register",
    "slug": "the-register",
    "url": "https://www.theregister.com/ai-and-ml/2026/10/27/elvis-rightsholders-sue-anthropic-for-stealing-songs-and-leaving-them-in-heartbreak-hotel/5305625"
  },
  "original_language": "en",
  "account": "A coalition of rights holders who possess control over Elvis Presley's songs have initiated legal action against the AI company Anthropic for alleged copyright infringement. The group asserts that Anthropic utilized The King's works to train its artificial intelligence models. The lawsuit, filed in the Northern District of California, seeks to safeguard the exclusive rights of the plaintiffs. Describing Anthropic's actions, the complaint draws a parallel to an old adage, stating, \"Anthropic has essentially put to the test the adage of whether monkeys and typewriters could, provided enough time, recreate Hamlet.\" However, the plaintiffs argue that Anthropic chose a more expedient path by engaging in mimicry—essentially copyright infringement—rather than waiting for the proverbial infinite amount of time required by the infinite monkey theorem for monkeys with typewriters to recreate Shakespeare's work letter by letter. The lawsuit highlights several concerns, including the lack of applicability of fair use doctrines to certain content used for AI training, Anthropic's awareness of the potential illegality or theft in the data sets it utilized, the necessity of obtaining a license before allowing its products to generate content resembling copyrighted works, and the financial loss incurred by rights-holders due to the generation of content \"in the style of\" the infringed artists. The plaintiffs are seeking damages amounting to $150,000 per work, totaling $41.1 million. Anthropic has reportedly affirmed its intention to defend the case, but a previous dispute involving Anthropic training its models on books without acquiring permission from authors has been settled through the creation of a $1.5 billion fund to compensate writers. Given Anthropic's substantial financial resources and plans for a significant stock offering, the plaintiffs assert that the company can readily afford the requested compensation.",
  "summary": "They want a little less chatbot conversation, and a whole lot more royalty action",
  "key_points": [],
  "editors_take": null,
  "illustration": null,
  "coverage": {
    "outlets": 1,
    "also_reported_by": []
  },
  "ai_generated": true,
  "disclaimer": "Summaries, key points and the editor’s take are written by software from other outlets’ reporting and may contain errors — always check the linked original."
}