A collection of stakeholders and music companies that control the rights to Elvis Presley’s music sued Anthropic for copyright infringement, telling a federal court the AI company prioritized a potential multitrillion-dollar stock opening over respecting the copyright of the King of Rock ‘n’ Roll.
In a 28-page lawsuit filed Friday in the Northern District of California, the plaintiffs — including Authentic Brands Group, Raleigh Music Publishing and others — claimed the company’s AI model Claude was improperly trained on 274 of Presley’s songs, including iconic tracks such as “Can’t Help Falling in Love with You,” “Run On” and “Farther Along.” The group is demanding a total of $48.6 million in damages for the use of the songs and for Anthropic to cease infringing the rights holders’ copyright.
The plaintiffs’ lead attorney, Richard Busch, repeatedly takes aim at Anthropic’s public representation as a company eager to better humanity through AI by highlighting the other copyright infringement cases it was fighting.
“While in other cases for copyright infringement, Defendant has waxed poetic about the necessity of progress and AI’s value to society, there is simply no reason—other than rote expediency—to have that progress come at the cost of copyright holders,” Busch writes
Busch also claimed Anthropic’s virutistic posture contradicted its pursuit of a potentially $2 trillion initial public offering, tying its use of Presley’s catalog as a means of boosting its valuation. “The Works were created over periods of dozens of years, and Anthropic, by its infringing conduct, is destroying the value of these Works in a matter of a few years with only profit as its motive,” he wrote.
Busch and Anthropic did not respond to immediate requests for comment. Busch, a renowed music rights lawyer, previously sued Anthropic on behalf of Round Hill Music, an independent publisher, for $1 billion in August for allegedly illegally scraping hundreds of songs without permission.
Anthropic has faced several copyright infringement lawsuits from artists and writers over how it has trained its AI models, settling a lawsuit with a group of authors last year for $1.5 billion after they accused the company of misusing their books for such training. The Presley lawsuits as AI companies have gotten increasingly entangled in litigation over their models, following lawsuits against companies including Suno, Udio and others.