Claude’s safeguards are ineffective, the lawsuit alleges, with $41 million sought
Authentic Brands Group filed suit against Anthropic on Friday, alleging that the artificial intelligence company used 274 Elvis Presley songs without permission to train its model. Authentic Brands Group is the licensing organization that owns Presley’s music and likeness, and the complaint seeks $150,000 for each allegedly infringed track.
The lawsuit was first reported by Billboard. It is among the first major legal challenges brought directly by an artist’s estate against an AI developer, and its result could set a broader precedent for how AI companies may use existing music catalogues. AI firms have already faced copyright claims from the Recording Industry Association of America and the labels Sony, Universal and Warner Records.
Authentic Brands Group identified “Can’t Help Falling in Love,” “All Shook Up” and “A Little Less Conversation” among the 274 Presley works that the complaint says Anthropic used in training.
Richard Busch, the lawsuit’s lead attorney, wrote: “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.”
The complaint also alleges that “from its inception, Anthropic’s AI model, ‘Claude,’ has created infringing output of copyrighted material of virtually every song from every catalog available on the internet.”
The filing further argues that Anthropic instituted guardrails ineffectively, knew the safeguards had failed to prevent infringing outputs and continued to infringe music copyrights. It says Anthropic “knowingly engaged and continues to willfully engage in copyright infringement of others’ musical works.”
The plaintiffs are seeking $150,000 for each infringed track. The Guardian reported that the demand amounts to about $41 million (about £31 million).
AI music platforms work by analyzing large amounts of recorded music to learn the sounds, structures and expressions of songs. The systems then let users create their own AI-generated music through text or speech prompts.
Musicians have repeatedly raised concerns that their music and voices are being used without permission to train AI models. They have also expressed fears that AI-generated slop music could replace human-made songs.
Some AI bots have begun impersonating real living artists on music streaming platforms, The Guardian reported. Spotify announced last week that it had removed about 50 million songs considered AI slop from its recommendations to users over the past year.