Artificial intelligence company Anthropic is facing a copyright infringement lawsuit over allegations that it used 274 songs associated with legendary singer Elvis Presley to train its AI models without permission. The legal action, filed on Friday, October 23, names several of the singer’s well-known tracks, including “Can’t Help Falling in Love,” “A Little Less Conversation” and “Don’t Be Cruel.”The lawsuit has brought renewed attention to the growing conflict between the music industry and AI companies over the use of copyrighted creative works to develop artificial intelligence technology.
Why has Anthropic been sued over Elvis Presley’s songs?
The lawsuit has been brought by entities that hold rights to Presley’s music, including Authentic Brands Group, which controls key aspects of the singer’s intellectual property. The plaintiffs allege that Anthropic used copyrighted musical compositions and lyrics without obtaining the necessary authorisation or compensating the rights holders.According to Billboard, the complaint accuses Anthropic, the company behind the AI chatbot Claude, of using Presley’s catalogue to develop its technology. The plaintiffs argue that their exclusive rights over the music must be protected as AI companies increasingly rely on existing creative works to develop their products.The complaint also raises concerns about Claude’s ability to generate material resembling copyrighted music. The plaintiffs allege that even after Anthropic introduced safeguards intended to limit the reproduction of protected content, the chatbot continued to produce outputs that closely followed original songs in their structure, hooks and lyrical arrangements.
Lawsuit seeks millions in damages
The legal action seeks damages of up to $150,000 for each allegedly infringed song, potentially bringing the total claim to approximately $41 million. The amount sought reflects the scale of the alleged infringement, although any damages would ultimately depend on the outcome of the proceedings.Anthropic has faced scrutiny over how its AI models are trained and how they respond to requests involving copyrighted material. The company has previously defended its approach to AI development in copyright disputes, while artists, publishers and other rights holders have questioned whether their work can be used to train commercial AI systems without their consent.
AI companies face growing copyright challenges
The case adds to a broader wave of legal challenges concerning the use of copyrighted material in artificial intelligence training. Music publishers and other rights holders have increasingly questioned whether technology companies can use protected lyrics, compositions and other creative works without permission, particularly when AI systems can generate content that resembles existing works.In other cases, technology companies have claimed that using copyrighted materials to train AI models can count as ‘fair use’ under US law. But rights holders have raised concerns around consent, payment and the effect on original creative works.The outcome of this Presley related case will help the larger conversation around copyright law and AI. The key issue for the music owners is whether there was infringement of their exclusive rights by using the Presley catalogue.The allegations have not been proven yet so the case will have to go through the legal process.