Elvis Presley rightsholders sue AI company Anthropic over alleged copyright infringement of 274 songs

The owners of Elvis Presley‘s music have launched legal action against AI company Anthropic, accusing it of using 274 of hissongs to train its models without permission.

The lawsuit was filed on Friday (October 23) by a subsidiary of Authentic Brands Group, the company that controls much of Presley’s intellectual property, including his name, image and likeness rights, alongside other companies holding rights to his music.

As reported by Billboard, the plaintiffs allege that Anthropic, the company behind the AI chatbot Claude, infringed the copyrights of 274 songs associated with Presley, including some of his best-known hits, such as ‘Can’t Help Falling In Love’, ‘All Shook Up’, ‘Don’t Be Cruel’, ‘A Little Less Conversation’, ‘Return To Sender’ and ‘(You’re The) Devil In Disguise’.

The lawsuit claims that Anthropic used copyrighted compositions and lyrics to train its AI models without obtaining permission or paying the relevant rights holders, and that the technology is capable of generating unauthorised versions of existing songs.

Anthropic has not publicly responded to the lawsuit, but has previously maintained that training AI models on copyrighted material can be protected under US fair use law.

Richard Busch, lead attorney for the plaintiffs, has said: “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.”

The legal action also alleges that Claude has continued reproducing copyrighted material despite Anthropic introducing safeguards intended to prevent the chatbot from generating existing song lyrics.

According to the filing, when Claude was asked to recreate songs “for a modern audience”, it produced material that closely resembled the originals.

The plaintiffs are seeking statutory damages of up to $150,000 (£112,000) for each of the 274 songs, amounting to approximately $41.1million (£31million).

Busch previously represented Marvin Gaye‘s estate in its landmark copyright lawsuit against Robin Thicke and Pharrell Williams over their 2013 hit ‘Blurred Lines’. That case ultimately resulted in a ruling that the song had infringed Gaye’s 1977 track ‘Got To Give It Up’.

In October 2023, Universal Music Publishing Group, Concord Music Group and ABKCO sued Anthropic, alleging that Claude had reproduced copyrighted lyrics without authorisation. The publishers cited examples involving songs by Katy Perry, Gloria Gaynor and The Rolling Stones.

Meanwhile, Sony Music Publishing and Warner Chappell also filed a lawsuit against Anthropic in August, accusing the company of using copyrighted lyrics and sheet music from artists including The Beatles, Taylor Swift and Michael Jackson to train Claude.

Elsewhere, in September, Jason Isbell and several other musicians launched legal action against AI music generator Suno, alleging that it enabled users to imitate their identities and musical styles without consent.

In the UK, the music industry has also continued calling for greater protections around AI and copyright, with artists including Paul McCartney, Elton John and Dua Lipa campaigning for stronger safeguards against the unauthorised use of their work.