The owners of Elvis Presley’s music catalog are all shook up about Anthropic’s use of 274 of the King’s songs to train artificial intelligence models without permission and are seeking legal relief.
The lawsuit, filed on Friday in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, seeks a jury trial and $41.1 million -- $150,000 per song -- in damages, The New York Times reported.
The owners of the music -- Authentic Brands Group, Raleigh Music Publishing, multiple trusts and at least one person -- accused Anthropic of copyright infringement.
“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,” lead attorney Richard Busch wrote in the complaint, according to The Hollywood Reporter. “The Elvis Plaintiffs are deeply protective of these iconic songs.”
Anthropic, the company that created the chatbot Claude, is accused of infringing on Presley’s songs, including hits like “Return to Sender,” “Don’t Be Cruel,” “Can’t Help Falling in Love” and “All Shook Up,” Billboard reported.
“‘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, according to Rolling Stone. “Even after the Defendant supposedly put up ‘guardrails’ after being sued, in one of its latest iterations, Claude continues to infringe.”
The complaint also alleges that Anthropic built its business model based on copyright infringement “at a scale never seen before,” the Times reported.
A representative for Anthropic told the newspaper in a statement on Sunday that the company disagreed with the claims and intended to defend itself.
Last week, Anthropic was sued by Reservoir, the Times reported. The music company accused Anthropic of stealing copyrighted material -- including lyrics and melodies -- from Joni Mitchell, Madonna, Kings of Leon and Evanescence, according to the newspaper.
Anthropic also disputed the claims, Billboard reported.
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