Anthropic Sued for Using Elvis Presley Music to Train AI Models

Anthropic has been sued by the owners of Elvis Presley‘s music for allegedly utilizing his songs to train AI models without permission. As reported by Billboard, the suit was filed Friday and claims the company infringed 274 songs of Presley’s, including “Can’t Help Falling in Love,” “A Little Less Conversation” and “Don’t Be Cruel.” “The Elvis Plaintiffs bring this action to enforce these exclusive rights against the defendant that has built its entire business model based on copyright infringement at a scale never seen before,” wrote lead attorney Richard Busch. “The Elvis Plaintiffs are deeply protective of these iconic songs.” Authentic Brands Group, which owns the rights to Presley, filed the lawsuit alongside other entities that also own rights to the “Jailhouse Rock” singer, according to Billboard. “‘Claude’ has created infringing output of copyrighted material of virtually every song from every catalog available on the internet, including the Works,” the lawsuit states, per Rolling Stone. “Even after the Defendant supposedly put up ‘guardrails’ after being sued, in one of its latest iterations, Claude continues to infringe: when recently asked to recreate specific songs ‘for a modern audience,’ Claude did so and admitted: ‘These renders keep landing very close to the originals: same structure, same hooks reused with light rewording, and full sets of verses/choruses/bridges. That’s edging past ‘inspired by’ into reproducing the copyrighted song, even when the words are swapped out.’” In August, Round Hill sued Suno and Anthropic, claiming mass copyright infringement. They alleged the AI companies used hundreds of the publisher’s songs to train their AI models without permission. Anthropic was also previously sued by Universal Music Publishing, Abcko, Concord and BMG for similar claims of lyrics being utilized to train Claude, an AI agent. Rolling Stone reports that the suit is seeking $150,000 per infringed song. The Hollywood Reporter reached out to Anthropic for comment, but did not hear back.