Authentic Brands sues Anthropic over 274 Elvis Presley songs

Authentic Brands Group, the licensing company that owns Elvis Presley’s music catalog and likeness, sued Anthropic on October 23, alleging it used 274 Presley songs to train its models without permission.

Record labels including Sony, Universal and Warner Records and the Recording Industry Association of America have already brought copyright claims against AI developers, but this case is one of the first major challenges brought directly on behalf of an artist, The Guardian reported on October 25. Billboard first reported the suit.

The complaint names *Can’t Help Falling in Love*, *All Shook Up* and *A Little Less Conversation* among the works and seeks $150,000 for each infringed track, about $41 million in total. It alleges that Claude, Anthropic’s chatbot, has produced infringing output of “virtually every song from every catalog available on the internet.”

The plaintiffs also allege that Anthropic introduced guardrails to limit infringing music outputs only after being caught, and knew they did not work, which they say shows the infringement was willful.

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.

— Richard Busch, lead attorney for the plaintiffs, in the complaint

Anthropic, founded in 2021 by former OpenAI researchers, makes the Claude family of models. Music publishers including Universal Music Publishing Group, Concord and ABKCO sued the company in October 2023 over song lyrics used in training. The New York Times reported on October 26 that Anthropic is preparing to go public.