Elvis Presley Estate Sues Anthropic Over Claude AI Training

The rights holders to Elvis Presley's music have filed a lawsuit against AI company Anthropic. They allege that the maker of the Claude chatbot fed more than 270 of Presley's songs into the training of its AI models without the consent of the administrators of his musical legacy.

The complaint, filed with a California court on 23 October, seeks damages of more than $41 million (about €36.6 million), or $150,000 per song. The works at issue include hits such as "Can't Help Falling in Love", "A Little Less Conversation" and "Return to Sender".

Circumvention claims

Beyond the alleged copyright infringement, the plaintiffs accuse Anthropic of bypassing measures that protect the music and of removing or altering copyright information in the songs. According to the complaint, Anthropic built its entire business model on copyright infringement on an unprecedented scale.

Anthropic did not initially respond to a request for comment from the German news agency dpa. On 25 October, however, the company told The New York Times that it disputes the allegations and intends to defend itself against the suit.

A high-profile case in a wider fight

Music companies have sued AI firms over alleged theft and copyright violations before. Billboard describes the new case as the most high-profile legal action ever brought on behalf of a single musician, given that Presley is arguably the most famous recording artist of all time.

Anthropic is not alone. OpenAI, the developer of ChatGPT, also faces lawsuits and accusations over how its models were built. Such systems are trained on millions of items from books, the internet and other sources so they can generate accurate answers.

Many of the legal questions remain unresolved. AI companies like Anthropic typically argue in court that the principle of fair use covers the use of copyrighted material, because the process produces something new. Whether a court accepts that argument for music, and for the circumvention claims specifically, will be a key point as the case proceeds.