In fact, some AI tools have already publicly imitated living real-world singers on major music streaming platforms.Author and source: AIBase
Recently, Authentic Brands Group, the owner of Elvis Presley’s music catalog, filed a lawsuit against the AI company Anthropic. The plaintiff alleges that Anthropic used 274 of Elvis’s songs without permission to train its AI model and is seeking damages of up to $41 million.
This lawsuit breaks the previous norm, where enforcement actions were typically initiated by the Recording Industry Association or major record labels, and stands as one of the first major legal actions directly targeting AI development companies by the estate representatives of renowned artists. The final ruling in this case is likely to establish a landmark legal precedent for how AI companies may legally use existing music catalogs in the future.
Plaintiff’s lead counsel, Richard Bush, stated in the complaint that the plaintiffs are bringing this lawsuit to firmly defend their proprietary rights, directly asserting that the defendant’s entire business model is built on an unprecedented scale of copyright infringement. The complaint further claims that Anthropic’s AI model, Claude, since its inception, has been capable of generating infringing content for nearly every song in online music libraries.
The allegedly infringing tracks include Elvis Presley classics such as "Can't Help Falling in Love," "Hound Dog," and "Little Less Conversation." The plaintiff is seeking damages of $150,000 per infringing track, equivalent to approximately RMB 1.003 million per song, with a total claimed amount of about $41 million, or roughly RMB 274 million.
The complaint further highlights that Anthropic only implemented the so-called protective measures to restrict the output of infringing music content after the issue came to light, but these safeguards proved ineffective, and the company was aware of their ineffectiveness yet still allowed the model to continue generating infringing music. The plaintiff argues that this fully demonstrates Anthropic’s willful and intentional infringement of others’ musical works, reflecting clear malicious intent.
Currently, the underlying logic of AI music platforms generally involves analyzing vast amounts of recorded works to learn and master the timbre, structure, and expressive style of songs, after which users can quickly generate AI music through text or voice commands.
In response to this technological trend, many musicians have publicly expressed concerns, fearing both that their music and vocal styles could be used without authorization or compensation by AI models, and that low-quality AI-generated music might ultimately replace outstanding human-created songs.
In fact, some AI tools have already publicly imitated living, real-world singers on major music streaming platforms. Last week, streaming giant Spotify released data showing that, over the past year, the platform has removed approximately 50 million such low-quality AI-generated songs from its recommendation feeds.