THE BIG STORY: Major players in the music industry have already been litigating over artificial intelligence for years. But now they’re led by a King.
The owners of Elvis Presley‘s music threw the rock legend into the epic battle over AI last week, suing tech giant Anthropic over accusations that it trained its models on hundreds of the legendary artist’s songs without permission.
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The case, which claims Anthropic used “Can’t Help Falling in Love,” “A Little Less Conversation” and “Don’t Be Cruel” and more than 270 more Elvis tracks, represents by far the most high-profile legal action filed on behalf of an individual musician so far — in this case, arguably the most famous recording artist of all time.
Will modern music stars take similar legal action over AI? We’ll let you know if they do.
For more details, go read our full story here, including access to the actual lawsuit filed in federal court.
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Other top stories this week…
–My Chemical Romance was sued by the Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders after the band’s backup dancers performed in look-alike uniforms. I chatted with trademark experts about it — and they weren’t impressed: “This case is the poster child for why the First Amendment matters.”
–Neil Young sued President Trump (again) for playing “Rockin’ in the Free World’ at rallies, telling a federal judge that the 1989 song is “the opposite of everything that Donald J. Trump stands for.”
-A federal judge dismissed a class action claiming Spotify turns a “blind eye” to streaming fraud and allows billions of fake bot streams of Drake and other stars — this time for good.
–Stevie Wonder‘s lawyers filed a lawsuit to evict a woman named Carmen Efferson — a one-time fiancée to the singer who’s lived rent-free in his ritzy Hollywood Hills house since 1988.
-The rights to Damon Dash’s life story were auctioned off to a film company for $550,000 as part of the Roc-A-Fella co-founder’s $25 million bankruptcy case.
–Aaron Carter’s estate settled wrongful death claims it had filed against Walgreens and another pharmacy that filled the singer’s Xanax prescriptions before his 2022 drowning.
-Days prior to the Elvis lawsuit, Reservoir filed its own cases against both Anthropic and Suno, accusing the labs of training AI models on Madonna, Johnny Cash and Joni Mitchell.
-If you still have questions about the big Supreme Court case over copyright termination — and you should, it was really weird — I tried to answer them all here in this exhaustive explainer.
–Chris Brown managed to avoid a prison sentence in the U.K. over a 2023 attack on music producer Abe Diaw at a London nightclub.
-House Democrats continued to probe StubHub CEO Eric Baker about ties between the ticket resale platform and his own broker fund Andro Capital.
–Eminem’s former sound engineer pleaded guilty to federal charges that he stole and resold unreleased music that leaked on the internet last year.
-Federal prosecutors fired back at Pooh Shiesty, telling a judge there’s nothing “inhumane” about his treatment in jail as he awaits trial for allegedly holding Gucci Mane at gunpoint.
–50 Cent sued Rick Ross’ ex-girlfriend Tia Kemp for defamation over “highly offensive” social media posts about his 14-year-old son Sire Jackson.
