Anthropic sued for using Elvis Presley's music to train AI
What's the story
Authentic Brands Group, the licensing organization that owns both Elvis Presley's music and likeness, is suing artificial intelligence (AI) company Anthropic. The lawsuit alleges that Anthropic used Presley's songs without permission to train its AI models. The suit, first reported by Billboard, accuses Anthropic of infringing on the rights of 274 Presley songs.
Allegations
Plaintiffs are seeking $150,000 per infringed track
The songs include popular tracks like Can't Help Falling in Love, All Shook Up, and A Little Less Conversation. The plaintiffs are seeking $150,000 per infringed track, which amounts to about $41 million in total.
Industry impact
Case could set precedent for future lawsuits
This lawsuit comes after other AI companies have been sued for copyright infringement by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) and music labels such as Sony, Universal, and Warner Records.
However, this case is unique as it is one of the first major legal challenges from an artist's estate against an AI developer.
The outcome could set a precedent for how AI companies use existing music catalogs.
Model misuse
Lawsuit claims Anthropic knowingly engaged in copyright infringement
The lawsuit claims that Anthropic's AI model, 'Claude,' has been generating infringing output of copyrighted material from virtually every song catalog available on the internet.
It also accuses Anthropic of knowingly engaging in and continuing to willfully engage in copyright infringement of others' musical works.
This is despite the company's attempts at implementing guardrails to limit outputs that infringe upon music copyrights.
Industry concerns
Musicians have raised concerns
AI music platforms learn from large amounts of recorded music to create new, AI-generated tracks via text or speech prompts.
However, musicians have raised concerns about their work being used without permission by these models. They are also worried that AI-generated "slop" music could replace human-made songs.
Last week, Spotify revealed it had removed around 50 million songs considered as AI slop from its user recommendations over the past year.