San Francisco:The owners of Elvis Presley's music catalog have initiated legal action against Anthropic, an artificial intelligence company. The lawsuit accuses Anthropic of utilizing 274 songs from the iconic singer's repertoire to train its Claude AI models without obtaining the necessary permissions.

According to Anadolu Agency – English, the lawsuit was filed on Friday in the US District Court for the Northern District of California by a subsidiary of Authentic Brands Group, which acquired the intellectual property and trademark rights of Elvis Presley in 2013. The plaintiffs in the case include music publishers Raleigh Music Publishing and Abilene Music, along with trusts associated with songwriter Luigi Creatore and the Aberbach family, whose publishing business previously controlled the rights to Presley's songs.

The legal complaint alleges that Anthropic copied Presley's songs without securing a license or making any payments, and retained these works in an internal repository for further training of future versions of the Claude AI models. Some of the songs mentioned in the lawsuit include classics like "Can't Help Falling in Love," "All Shook Up," "Don't Be Cruel," "A Little Less Conversation," and "Return to Sender."

The plaintiffs are demanding $150,000 for each of the 274 songs that were allegedly infringed upon, which totals $41.1 million, with additional damages raising their claim to $48.6 million. Richard Busch, the lead attorney for the plaintiffs, accused Anthropic of basing its business model on copyright infringement and emphasized that the plaintiffs are 'deeply protective' of their music catalog.

Anthropic has contested the allegations, stating, "We disagree with the claims and intend to defend this case fully," as reported to NBC News. This case represents a growing trend of copyright disputes between AI developers and the music industry, potentially impacting the future use of copyrighted music in AI training.