They sue the AI company Anthropic for using Elvis Presley's songs without permission

BarcelonaThe owners of Elvis Presley's music rights have filed a lawsuit against the artificial intelligence company Anthropic, founded in 2021 by Dario Amodei, Daniela Amodei, Chris Olah, and Jared Kaplan. The plaintiffs accuse the company of having committed copyright infringement by having used more than 274 of the musician's songs without permission to train Anthropic's AI models. According to the complaint, among the songs used are major hits such as Can't help falling in love, A little less conversation, Don't be cruel, All shook up and Return to sender. The complaint maintains that Anthropic has built its business model on the massive violation of intellectual property on an unprecedented scale.

Attorney Richard Busch, who is leading the lawsuit, is requesting a jury trial and claiming damages of 134,040 euros for each song used, a fact that raises the total amount demanded to more than 36.66 million euros. The accusation points out that the chatbot Claude "has created content that infringes the copyrights of practically all the songs from all the catalogs available on the internet".

For its part, an Anthropic representative states that the company does not agree with the accusations and that it will defend itself firmly during the legal process. This is not the first legal action the company has faced, as it has previously been sued by major companies in the music sector such as Universal Music Group, BMG, Round Hill, and Reservoir. The latter company accuses Anthropic of stealing protected lyrics and melodies from songs such as Big yellow taxi by Joni Mitchell and Papa don't preach by Madonna, as well as tracks by groups such as Kings of Leon and Evanescence. In its defense, Anthropic alleges that its AI training practices are covered by the legal doctrine of fair use.