Elvis Presley’s estate sues Anthropic over copyright

The legal action, processed through a subsidiary of Authentic Brands Group in alliance with the holders of the editorial rights of the King of Rockaccuses the company of having trained its systems with at least 274 compositions without a license or financial compensation. As detailed in the lawsuit filed by Billboardthe tool would not only have used these works to feed its algorithms, but is still capable of generating lyrics and passages that reproduce the original songs almost identically, even behind the supposed protection barriers introduced by the technology itself.

The prosecution’s legal team, headed by lawyer Richard Busch —known for successfully defending the family of Marvin Gaye in the historic litigation against Pharrell Williams and Robin Thicke for “Blurred Lines”—requests the maximum penalty allowed by law: $150,000 for each of the affected songs. In this way, the total claim would exceed 41 million dollars. For the moment, Anthropic has not made an explicit statement on this latest complaint, although in similar disputes it has appealed to the doctrine of fair use (legitimate use) protected by the US legislative framework.

This new judicial front aggravates the pressure on the San Francisco-based company, which is already dragging open disputes with giants of the recording sector such as Universal Music Group, Sony Music and Warner Chappell for the unauthorized use of catalogs that range from The Rolling Stones until Taylor Swift. The demand is also part of a global wave of mobilizations within the creative sector, where figures such as Paul McCartney either Dua Lipa They continue to demand strict regulatory frameworks that protect intellectual property against the advancement of AI generators.