The rights holders of Elvis Presley have filed a lawsuit against Anthropic, accusing it of using 274 songs by the “King” without authorization to train its artificial intelligence models. According to the American magazine Billboard, the complaint, filed on Friday, October 23, targets the artist’s entire catalog.
- Elvis Presley’s rights holders sue Anthropic over 274 songs used to train its AI.
- They claim Claude reproduced the songs, keeping their structure and hooks.
- They seek $41 million in damages, or $150,000 per song.
- Anthropic disputes the allegations and plans to defend itself fully.
The proceedings were initiated by Authentic Brands Group, which holds the majority of the rights to Elvis Presley’s image and songs. It accuses the American company of infringing copyright on the entire catalog, including his greatest hits such as “Can’t Help Falling in Love”, “Don’t Be Cruel”, and “A Little Less Conversation”.
More than inspiration, reproduction
According to the rights holders’ lawyer, Richard Busch, the goal of this action is to enforce their intellectual property against a company that has “built its business model on copyright infringement, on a scale never seen before”. A veteran of major music industry lawsuits, the lawyer insists: “The plaintiffs in the Elvis case are very attached to these iconic songs.”
In the complaint, he argues that when Claude, Anthropic’s model, was asked to reproduce songs for “a modern audience”, it complied. The model itself allegedly admits that “these renditions remain very close to the originals: same structure, same hooks reused with slight rephrasing”. For the plaintiffs, this goes far beyond inspiration and amounts to reproduction, “even with lyric changes”.
The financial damages claimed amount to $150,000 per song, totaling $41 million. Responding to the BBC, an Anthropic spokesperson stated that the company “disputes the allegations and intends to defend itself fully in this matter”.
A pile-up of legal battles
This complaint adds to other actions targeting Anthropic for using protected music. The most recent was filed by publisher Reservoir on October 21. It also targets Suno, presented as the leader in AI-generated music, and accuses both companies of infringing the rights to songs by Madonna and Johnny Cash, among others.
These moves follow in the wake of the joint complaint filed by the three major music industry groups, Universal Music Group, Sony Music, and Warner Music Group. Warner reached a deal with Suno last year, while Universal and Sony continue their legal battle against the company.
In late August, Warner Music and Sony Music also sued Anthropic for copyright infringement, similarly seeking up to $150,000 per song. That case is still ongoing. The company led by Dario Amodei had already faced a complaint from authors of over 500,000 books, who secured a $1.5 billion settlement in 2025.
