IT之家 News on October 26: The holder of the Elvis Presley (Elvis Presley) music catalog is suing the artificial intelligence company Anthropic, accusing the company of using Presley's songs to train AI models without permission.
Authentic Brands Group, the licensing agency that holds the rights to Presley's music and likeness, accuses Anthropic of infringing rights related to 274 of Presley's songs. The lawsuit was filed in court last Friday, local time.
Although AI companies have previously faced copyright infringement lawsuits from the Recording Industry Association of America and record labels such as Sony, Universal, and Warner, this case is one of the first major legal actions brought directly against an AI development company by an artist's estate. The verdict could set a general precedent for how AI companies may use existing music catalogs.
Lead attorney Richard Busch wrote in the complaint: "The plaintiffs bring this lawsuit to protect their proprietary rights. The defendant's entire business model is built on copyright infringement of an unprecedented scale."
The complaint states: "From its inception, Anthropic's AI model, named Claude, has been able to generate infringing content of nearly every song in the various catalogs on the internet."
The complaint further alleges that Anthropic used 274 of Presley's songs to train its AI model, including tracks such as "Can't Help Falling in Love," "All Shook Up," and "A Little Less Conversation." The plaintiffs are seeking $150,000 per infringing track (IT之家 note: approximately 1.003 million RMB at the current exchange rate), with total damages of about $41 million (approximately 274 million RMB at the current exchange rate).
The complaint states: "Anthropic only set up so-called guardrails to restrict the output of infringing musical content after being discovered, and these guardrails have proven ineffective; meanwhile, the company knew full well that these safeguards could not stop the model from continuing to produce infringing musical content. This is sufficient to prove that Anthropic acted knowingly and willfully, and continuously and intentionally infringed the copyrights of others' musical works."
AI music platforms operate by analyzing massive amounts of recorded works, learning the timbre, structure, and expressive style of songs, and then letting users generate AI music through text or voice commands.
Many musicians have repeatedly expressed concerns that their music and voices may be used by AI models without permission, and that shoddy AI-generated music could replace songs created by humans.
Some AI bots have even imitated real, living singers on music streaming platforms. Last week, streaming giant Spotify announced that over the past year, the platform had removed about 50 million such low-quality AI tracks from its recommendation feeds.