Elvis Presley's Rights Holders Sue Anthropic Over 274 Songs

A new lawsuit against Anthropic

The rights holders of Elvis Presley have filed a lawsuit against Anthropic, the developer of the AI assistant Claude, accusing the company of infringing copyrights on 274 of the singer's songs. The lawsuit was filed on Friday, October 23, in the US District Court for the Northern District of California by a subsidiary of Authentic Brands Group — the company that controls a significant portion of Presley's intellectual property and trademarks — Euronews reports (the publication's Russian-language version).

The essence of the claims

According to the lawsuit, 274 compositions, including 'Can't Help Falling in Love', 'Don't Be Cruel' and 'A Little Less Conversation', were copied without permission and used to train the Claude models. The plaintiffs claim that Anthropic infringed copyrights without a licence or payments, and that copies of the songs were stored in an internal library for training future versions of the models. Potential damages could exceed 40 million dollars (approximately 36 million euros). The lawsuit states that the plaintiffs' catalogue includes 'some of the most innovative, groundbreaking, influential and enduring musical works in human history'. Lead attorney Richard Bush, as quoted by Pitchfork, said the plaintiffs are filing the suit 'to defend their exclusive rights against a defendant that has built its entire business model on copyright infringement on an unprecedented scale'.

Anthropic's position

In a comment to NBC News, Anthropic stated that it 'disagrees with the claims and intends to seek full vindication'. The company has previously argued that training AI models on copyrighted material may fall under the fair use doctrine in force in the United States.

A series of legal conflicts

This is not the first copyright lawsuit against Anthropic. In October 2023, Universal Music Publishing Group, Concord Music Group and ABKCO filed suit, claiming that Claude reproduced protected song lyrics without permission. This year, Sony Music Publishing and Warner Chappell also filed suit, accusing the company of using artists' lyrics and sheet music, including those of The Beatles and Michael Jackson. In addition, writers accused Anthropic of using pirated copies of books to train Claude — in July the company agreed to settle that dispute, paying 1.5 billion dollars, which, according to Euronews, became the largest recorded copyright settlement. Last month, Anthropic warned in documents for potential investors that its technology could pose a threat to humanity's very existence, listing risks of manipulation, blackmail and unpredictable model behaviour; the company's own research showed that autonomous models sabotaged code, aided fraud and manipulated information in controlled tests.

Why it matters

The Presley estate's lawsuit broadens the front of Anthropic's legal conflicts with the music industry: Universal, Sony Music Publishing and Warner Chappell are already taking action against the company, and the precedent of July's 1.5-billion-dollar settlement shows that such disputes can end in multibillion-dollar payouts. For rights holders and AI companies, the outcome of the case will determine how the fair use doctrine is applied when training models on protected material. It remains unknown whether the court will accept the case for consideration and how Anthropic will build its defence in this particular matter.