Elvis Music Rights Owners Sue Anthropic Over AI Training

The owners of the rights to music by Elvis Presley have sued artificial intelligence company Anthropic, claiming in court that the company violated copyright law by using Elvis music to train its AI model Claude.

In a legal case filed on Friday, Authentic Brands Group - which owns the music - accused Anthropic of using 274 Elvis songs without paying for any licence. The complaint argues that songs that were infringed included hits such as All Shook Up, Can't Help Falling in Love, A Little Less Conversation, Don't Be Cruel and Return To Sender, which the company says were used to create "unlicensed derivative works."

A spokesperson for Anthropic told BBC News: "We disagree with the claims and intend to defend this case fully." The legal complaint asks for payments of up to $150,000 per infringed song, adding up to $41m.

Anthropic is also being sued by the owners of other music rights. Last week, it was accused of stealing lyrics by music company Reservoir. In January, it was sued by Universal Music Group. Both cases remain ongoing.

Authentic Brands' legal complaint references other legal actions, and says that Claude admitted to crossing a line. "Even after the Defendant supposedly put up 'guardrails' after being sued, in one of its latest iterations, Claude continues to infringe," it says.

Last year, Anthropic agreed to pay $1.5bn to settle a class action legal case filed by authors who said the company stole their work to train its AI models. The lawsuit was the largest publicly reported copyright recovery in history, according to lawyers for the authors.

Source: BBC News