AI & Tech

Authentic Brands Group sues Anthropic over Elvis Presley songs used to train Claude

Owners of Elvis Presley's music catalogue say Anthropic trained its Claude models on 274 of his songs without permission. The suit, filed on Friday, 23 October, seeks about $41 million in damages.

AI text based on reports by Mediafax.ro, Vulture, The New York Times and other publishers. Published today at 08:52. How it is made

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In brief

How it came to this

23 OctAuthentic Brands Group and co-plaintiffs file the complaint in the Northern District of California
25 OctFirst media reports on the complaint are published

Filing and plaintiffs

Owners of Elvis Presley's music catalogue sued the artificial intelligence company Anthropic on Friday, 23 October, in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California. The complaint says Anthropic used Presley's songs to train its Claude models without a licence and without payment. Authentic Brands Group, which according to Mediafax acquired Presley's intellectual property and trademark rights in 2013, leads the claim through a subsidiary. Co-plaintiffs include other music publishers, Raleigh Music Publishing, and trusts connected to composer Luigi Creatore, who co-wrote "Can't Help Falling in Love". Lead attorney Richard Busch issued a statement with the filing.

“The Elvis Plaintiffs are deeply protective of these iconic songs.”

Richard Busch

What the complaint alleges

Plaintiffs say Anthropic gathered copyright-protected lyrics from the internet, including through archives and web crawl datasets, and kept copies in an internal repository for developing later versions of Claude. Most reports cite 274 songs, among them "Can't Help Falling in Love", "All Shook Up" and "A Little Less Conversation". The New York Times describes more than 200 songs, so the count differs between accounts. The filing also cites an occasion when Claude was asked to recreate specific songs for a modern audience and produced renders that plaintiffs say stayed very close to the originals, with the same structure and reused hooks. The complaint further accuses Anthropic of circumventing protection measures and of removing or altering copyright management information from the songs.

Damages sought

Plaintiffs ask for $150,000 per song, which comes to $41.1 million for copyright infringement across 274 songs. They also ask for $685,000 for alleged circumvention of copyright protection and $6.85 million for alleged removal of copyright management information, bringing the total claim to $48.6 million. Most reports give the headline figure as about $41 million, which matches the copyright component alone. The suit also asks for a permanent injunction against further infringement and an order requiring Anthropic to destroy unauthorised copies of the protected works. Plaintiffs want a jury trial.

Damages claimed by Elvis plaintiffs against AnthropicUSD millions

Data from the article text

Context and Anthropic's position

Anthropic disagrees with the claims. Mediafax reports that Anthropic already faces several lawsuits from music publishers accusing it of using copyrighted lyrics to train Claude without permission. The Guardian notes that AI firms have previously faced copyright claims from the Recording Industry Association of America and labels such as Sony, Universal and Warner Records. This case stands out because an artist's estate brings it directly against an AI developer, a route Pitchfork describes as one of the first of its kind for a single artist's catalogue. The outcome could set a broader precedent for how AI companies use existing music catalogues. No ruling has been reported so far.

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