Elvis Presley song rightsholders sue Anthropic for more than $48.6 million

MUSIC INDUSTRY

The owners of rights in songs made famous by Elvis Presley have sued Anthropic, the company behind the AI chatbot Claude.

The complaint, filed on October 23 in the US District Court for the Northern District of California, alleges that Anthropic copied the lyrics of 274 songs recorded by Presley to train its AI models without a license or payment.

The works named include All Shook Up, Can't Help Falling in Love, Don't Be Cruel, A Little Less Conversation and Return to Sender. The plaintiffs also allege that Claude generates copies of the lyrics and new works based on them in response to user prompts.

The claim seeks actual damages and Anthropic's profits or, alternatively, statutory damages of up to $150,000 per willfully infringed work, alongside counts under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act; the pleaded totals amount to more than $48.6 million.

Source: Music Business Worldwide