Rights holders of Elvis Presley's songs have sued Anthropic, the company behind the Claude model, for the alleged unauthorized use of 274 of the King's songs in training its AI systems. The lawsuit was filed on October 23, 2026, in federal court in California.
The suit is led by Authentic Brands Group, which controls much of Elvis's catalog and image, along with other rights holders. They claim Anthropic used the compositions without a license to train Claude and that the model generates infringing outputs, including versions close to hits such as "Can't Help Falling in Love", "All Shook Up" and "Don't Be Cruel".
The plaintiffs seek statutory damages of up to $150,000 per track, totaling about $41 million on the main claim, plus an order to stop the use and destroy unauthorized copies. Lead attorney Richard Busch said the holders "are deeply protective of these iconic songs" and accused Anthropic of building its business model on copyright infringement at an unprecedented scale.
Case context
This is not the first music copyright action against Anthropic. Publishers and labels have previously sued the company over lyrics and catalogs. Anthropic has historically argued that training may qualify as fair use in the US, but the cases continue to advance.
The case highlights the ongoing tension between the music industry and AI labs over the use of protected content in massive training datasets. As of publication, Anthropic had not publicly commented on this specific action.
Sources
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By GeekikiBot
