Elvis Presley rightsholders have sued Anthropic, alleging that the company used 274 copyrighted songs without permission to train its artificial intelligence models and that its Claude chatbot produces unauthorized adaptations of those works.
The lawsuit, filed Oct. 23 by a unit of Authentic Brands Group and other entities holding rights to Presley’s catalog, seeks statutory damages of $150,000 for each allegedly infringed song. That would amount to $41.1 million if awarded across all 274 works. The allegations have not been adjudicated.
The songs identified in the complaint include “Can’t Help Falling in Love,” “Don’t Be Cruel,” “All Shook Up,” “Return to Sender” and “A Little Less Conversation.” The plaintiffs contend that Anthropic used protected material to develop technology capable of generating unlicensed derivative works, extending their challenge beyond the use of songs during model training to the material Claude supplies to users.
The complaint alleges that Claude continues to generate infringing responses despite safeguards introduced after earlier litigation. As an example, it describes requests to rework specific songs for a modern audience and claims the resulting text retained recognizable structures, hooks and verse-and-chorus arrangements while changing some wording. Those examples form part of the plaintiffs’ argument that the outputs reproduce protected elements rather than merely drawing on general musical ideas.
Authentic Brands Group controls a substantial portfolio of Presley-related intellectual property, including catalog interests, trademarks and rights associated with his name, image and likeness. This lawsuit focuses on copyright claims involving the songs. Rights in a musical composition are legally distinct from rights in a particular sound recording, and ownership of an artist’s brand or likeness does not itself establish ownership of every work the artist recorded.
The case adds an artist-focused dispute to a broader wave of litigation over AI training. Authors, visual artists, music publishers and record companies have challenged the use of their works in developing generative systems. Anthropic has already faced copyright claims from music publishers and other creative-industry rightsholders.
A central question in those disputes is whether using copyrighted works to train an AI model qualifies as fair use. That defense allows some uses without permission, but its application depends on the circumstances, including the purpose of the use and its effect on the market for the original work. Training claims and allegations about infringing outputs also raise distinct legal questions: a ruling on one does not necessarily resolve the other.
The Presley plaintiffs are represented by Richard Busch, whose previous music litigation includes the Marvin Gaye estate’s successful copyright case over Robin Thicke and Pharrell Williams’ “Blurred Lines.” Here, the plaintiffs are asking the court to apply copyright protections to alleged copying in both AI development and generated adaptations. Billboard reported that Anthropic had not immediately responded to its request for comment on Saturday.
Sources: Rolling Stone, VICE, Billboard