Elvis Presley Rights Holders Sue Anthropic for $41 Million Over 274 Songs Used to Train Claude

On 23 October, Tennessee-based Authentic Brands Group and several co-plaintiffs with ownership over Elvis Presley rights filed a copyright-infringement lawsuit against AI company Anthropic. The complaint alleges that Anthropic trained its Claude model on 274 of Presley's songs — including "Can't Help Falling in Love," "Don't Be Cruel," "Farther Along," "If You Think I Don't Need You," and "Run On" — without obtaining a licence or paying any compensation. The plaintiffs seek roughly $41 million in damages, calculated at the statutory maximum of $150,000 per song across all 274 works. Lead attorney Richard Busch wrote that the plaintiffs are "deeply protective of these iconic songs" and accused Anthropic of building its entire business model on copyright infringement at an unprecedented scale. The lawsuit further contends that even after Anthropic introduced so-called guardrails following earlier legal challenges, Claude still produces material that edges past inspiration into reproduction of the copyrighted songs. Although major labels and music publishers have previously brought copyright claims against Anthropic, this case is one of the first high-profile suits in which the owner of a single artist's catalogue has sued the company directly. A representative for Anthropic told Pitchfork, "We disagree with the claims and intend to defend this case fully."