Elvis Presley estate sues AI firm Anthropic over 274 songs

The estate of Elvis Presley has filed a lawsuit against Anthropic, the company behind the AI chatbot Claude, alleging that it used 274 songs without permission to train its artificial intelligence models. The plaintiffs seek $41 million in damages, or $150,000 per work Source: El Tiempo.

The lawsuit, filed on October 23 in a California federal court, claims Anthropic infringed copyrights on classics such as "Can't Help Falling in Love," "Don't Be Cruel," and "All Shook Up" Source: Infobae. The plaintiffs include Authentic Brands Group, Raleigh Music Publishing, and other rights holders Source: ABC.

The allegations

The complaint argues that Anthropic built its business on "copyright infringement on a scale never before seen" Source: El Nacional (VE). It also accuses the company of removing copyright management information from the songs Source: Euronews (Español).

A key piece of evidence is a response from Claude itself, in which the chatbot reportedly admitted that its versions of songs "stay very close to the originals: same structure, same choruses reused with slight rewording" Source: Infobae. The plaintiffs say this shows that even after Anthropic claimed to have implemented safeguards, Claude continues to reproduce copyrighted material Source: ABC.

The defense

Anthropic has stated that it disagrees with the allegations and intends to defend itself fully Source: Excélsior. The company has previously argued that training AI on copyrighted material is protected under the "fair use" doctrine Source: El Tiempo.

Broader context

This lawsuit is part of a wave of legal actions against AI companies. Reservoir recently sued Anthropic over songs by Madonna and Joni Mitchell Source: Infobae. Universal Music Group also filed a $3 billion suit against Anthropic in January Source: El Nacional (VE). In July, Anthropic reached a $1.5 billion settlement with authors who accused it of using pirated books Source: ABC.