The owners of Elvis Presley’s music sued Anthropic, alleging that it used his copyrighted lyrics without permission to train its AI models and generated infringing versions of his songs.
In a complaint filed Friday, Authentic Brands Group, the licensing platform that controls Presley’s intellectual property — as well as other companies, trusts and individuals who own the rights to his music — accused Anthropic of infringing on the copyrights of 274 songs without any licensing or payment.
These cover some of Presley’s biggest hits, including “All Shook Up”, “Can’t Help Falling in Love”, “Don’t Be Cruel”, “A Little Less Conversation” and “Return to Sender”.
“Elvis Plaintiffs’ iconic collective catalog contains some of the most revolutionary, influential, and enduring musical compositions in human history,” the lawsuit states.
The plaintiffs allege that the infringement occurred throughout “the entire development” of Anthropic’s flagship models, Claude, and continues today as users generate output that reproduces copyrighted lyrics or creates unauthorized adaptations of the songs.
“As we say in the lawsuit, Elvis Plaintiffs are the guardians and most protectors of Elvis’ songs, which are among the most iconic of all time,” attorney Richard Busch wrote in a statement.
An Anthropic spokesperson wrote: “We disagree with these assertions and intend to fully defend this matter. »
The complaint further describes Anthropic as having “built its entire business model on copyright infringement on an unfathomable scale,” highlighting the allegations massive scraping of Internet content and hacking of books to develop his Claude language models.
Last year, Anthropic agreed to a historic $1.5 billion settlement in a copyright infringement lawsuit brought by authors who alleged the company illegally used pirated copies of their books to train AI models. This is the largest settlement in the history of U.S. copyright cases.
The lawsuit filed by Presley’s rights holders comes amid a broader wave of lawsuits against Anthropic and other AI companies accused of using copyrighted musical works without consent or compensation.
In January, Universal Music, Concord Music Group and ABKCO Music expanded their lawsuit against Anthropic for alleged infringement of copyrighted song lyrics. BMG Rights Management, Sony Music Publishing and Warner Chappell Music filed similar lawsuits against Anthropic this year.
Anthropic and music generation company AI Suno have also recently been hit with lawsuits from independent music publisher Round Hill — which is represented by Busch, the lead attorney for Presley’s rights holders — and independent music company Reservoir Media.
“Even after Defendant supposedly put ‘guardrails’ in place after being sued, in one of his latest iterations, Claude continues to violate,” Presley’s rights holders say in their lawsuit.
The complaint states that when recently asked to recreate specific songs “for a modern audience,” Claude did so.
“These renderings continue to be very close to the originals: same structure, same hooks reused with slight rephrasing, and full sets of verses/choruses/bridges,” the complaint states. “It goes beyond the term ‘inspired by’ to reproduce the copyrighted song, even when the lyrics are swapped.”
Presley’s rights holders are seeking $41.1 million in statutory damages — up to $150,000 for each of 274 works they say were willfully infringed — according to the complaint.
They also demand a permanent injunction to prevent Anthropic from “further infringing” on Presley’s works and an order that the company destroy all unauthorized copies of the copyrighted works.
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