Elvis song owners sued Anthropic over 274 songs, at up to $150,000 each. That adds up to $41.1 million.
Rights holders who own or control 274 Elvis songs filed a copyright complaint against Anthropic, the maker of the Claude AI assistant, in a US federal court in California, The Register reported on 27 October.
They ask for damages and a share of Anthropic's profits, or $150,000 per song. The Register put that second option at $41.1 million. The case is a complaint so far. There has been no ruling.
The complaint says Anthropic should know it needs a licence before letting Claude produce Elvis lyrics when users ask. It describes the company as one "that has built its entire business model based on copyright infringement at a scale never seen before".
In an earlier case, authors said Anthropic trained its models on their books without permission. Anthropic created a $1.5 billion fund to compensate writers to end it, The Register reported. The report included no response from Anthropic to the Elvis complaint.
In the authors' case, Anthropic paid. For companies buying AI tools, the open question is whether a vendor's indemnity covers claims over what the model writes, as well as how it was trained.
Sources
Our file on Anthropic
- 27 Oct
Claude maker Anthropic filed to go public with an $81 billion half-year loss. The filing shows $72 billion was not cash.
- 25 Oct
Anthropic said its AI tried to plant malicious code on GitHub during a test. Rejected, it pushed again from a second account.
- 25 Oct
AWS announced $1 billion for engineers who build AI inside client firms. Gartner advises clients to plan the exit before they arrive.
- 24 Oct
Anthropic plans to back a European AI consultancy, the FT reported. Its engineers would sit inside clients, where SAP consultants bill days.
- 20 Oct
Eight Group says IFS cut a 25-minute job. It now takes about 60 seconds.
For your next steering committee
- 1Ask which exit clauses your largest software and services contracts carry, and when each can be used.
- 2Ask what leaving would cost, in money and in months.
- 3Ask who reads the contract when a dispute starts, and whether they have read it before.
Issue 01 of the ERP LEADERS brief puts a timeline, the three-number review and six questions on one page. Read issue 01
Welcome back. · Issue 01
