The music rights holders of the late American singer Elvis Presley have filed a lawsuit against artificial intelligence company Anthropic, accusing it of using the legendary artist’s songs to train its models without prior permission.
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Authentic Brands Group, which manages licensing for Presley’s works and holds rights related to his music and image, accuses Anthropic of infringing the intellectual property rights associated with 274 of his songs.
The lawsuit was filed on Friday, according to a report first published by Billboard magazine. The case could mark a significant development in the escalating legal disputes between music rights holders and artificial intelligence developers.
AI companies have previously faced copyright infringement lawsuits from the Recording Industry Association of America, as well as major music companies, including Sony, Universal and Warner Records.
However, the new case is among the first major legal challenges brought directly by an organisation managing an artist’s legacy against an AI developer. Its outcome could set an influential legal precedent for determining the rules governing the use of existing music libraries to train these technologies.
Lead attorney Richard Busch said in the lawsuit that those associated with Elvis Presley’s legacy had brought the case to defend their exclusive rights against a company accused of building its entire business model on copyright infringement on an unprecedented scale.
The lawsuit alleges that Anthropic’s Claude AI model has generated copyright-infringing outputs since its launch, involving protected material that includes songs from music libraries available online.
Anthropic is accused of using 274 Elvis Presley songs to train its AI model, including “Can’t Help Falling in Love,” “All Shook Up” and “A Little Less Conversation.”
The plaintiffs are seeking $150,000 in damages for each song found to have been infringed, bringing the total claim to approximately $41 million, equivalent to around £31 million.
The lawsuit alleges that Anthropic was aware of copyright-related concerns but nevertheless continued practices that infringed music rights holders’ intellectual property.
According to the filing, the company introduced safeguards intended to limit the generation of copyright-infringing music content, but those measures proved ineffective after the alleged violations were discovered.
The lawsuit further argues that the company’s alleged awareness of the safeguards’ ineffectiveness, coupled with its continued operations, indicates that it deliberately infringed intellectual property rights and continues to do so knowingly.
AI music generation platforms analyse vast quantities of recordings to learn musical sounds, structures, compositions and styles before allowing users to create new tracks through text or voice prompts.
These technologies have sparked growing concern across the music industry in recent years, with artists and musicians repeatedly warning against the use of their voices and works to train AI models without their consent or appropriate licences.
Musicians have also warned that the widespread availability of AI-generated songs, some of which are described as poor-quality output, could crowd out human-composed and produced music and affect artists’ opportunities in the music market.
Concerns are no longer limited to the use of existing music to train models. Some AI-powered systems have also begun impersonating real, living artists and releasing music that imitates their voices and styles on streaming platforms.
In a development reflecting the scale of the phenomenon, global music streaming platform Spotify announced last week that it had removed around 50 million songs classified as low-quality AI-generated music from user recommendations over the past year.
The lawsuit over Elvis Presley’s songs comes amid escalating disputes between technology companies and the music industry over the legal boundaries governing the use of copyrighted material to develop AI systems.
In a separate, related case, Anthropic faced a lawsuit accusing it of misappropriating tens of thousands of songs and using them without permission to train its Claude model, highlighting the expanding scope of legal disputes over the use of music in AI technologies.
