Rights holders associated with Authentic Brands Group and other owners of Elvis Presley’s music copyrights have sued Anthropic, alleging the company used 274 copyrighted Presley songs without authorization in developing its Claude AI models. The complaint was filed in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California on October 23.

According to the lawsuit, the works at issue include well-known Presley songs such as “Can’t Help Falling in Love”, “All Shook Up”, “Don’t Be Cruel” and “A Little Less Conversation”. The plaintiffs allege that Anthropic copied copyrighted lyrics and compositions without obtaining licenses or paying rights holders.

The plaintiffs seek statutory damages of up to US$150,000 per work for alleged willful copyright infringement, which could total approximately US$41.1 million across the 274 songs, in addition to damages sought under separate copyright-related claims, as well as injunctive and other relief.

In the complaint, lead attorney Richard Busch alleges that Anthropic “built its entire business model based on copyright infringement at a scale never seen before.” The lawsuit further claims that Claude can generate outputs that reproduce or closely imitate copyrighted songs, including works in the Presley catalog. These allegations have not been proven in court.

Anthropic has publicly disputed the allegations, stating: “We disagree with the claims and intend to defend this case fully.” 

The lawsuit is one of the first major copyright cases brought on behalf of a single artist's catalog against an AI developer. Earlier music-related AI lawsuits were primarily filed by music publishers, record labels, and industry groups, including companies affiliated with Universal Music, Sony Music and Warner Music.

The case may also be influenced by the legal framework established in Bartz v. Anthropic. In a June 2025 ruling, Judge William Alsup held that using copyrighted books to train AI models could qualify as fair use under certain circumstances, while leaving the copyright status of pirated copies retained in a central library for further proceedings. The decision did not resolve whether AI-generated outputs may themselves infringe copyrights.

Although the lawsuit was filed under U.S. law, it touches on issues being examined internationally. Japan’s Copyright Act Article 30-4 permits certain uses of copyrighted works for machine learning and data analysis, while Singapore’s text and data mining exception generally requires lawful access to the source material. Whether those frameworks would apply to facts similar to those alleged in the Presley lawsuit remains unsettled and would depend on the specific circumstances and local law.

- Cathy Li