Authentic Brands Group, Raleigh Music Publishing and other owners of rights to songs recorded by Elvis Presley filed a copyright infringement lawsuit against Anthropic on Oct. 23 in U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California. The Elvis Presley copyright lawsuit claims the AI company copied the lyrics of 274 songs to train its Claude chatbot without permission.
The 28-page filing covers tracks including “Can’t Help Falling in Love,” “Run On” and “Farther Along,” Variety reported. Other reports name “All Shook Up” and “Don’t Be Cruel” among the works.
The plaintiffs are seeking about $48.6 million, Music Business Worldwide reported. That includes $41.1 million in statutory copyright damages, or $150,000 per song, plus $7.535 million under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. They also want a court order to stop the alleged infringement and to impound or destroy copies, including any in “model weights.”
What The Lawsuit Alleges
The complaint argues that Anthropic copied the lyrics, then used them to train Claude without a license or payment. It also accuses the company of bypassing protections on lyrics and stripping out songwriter and publisher credits.
Richard Busch, the plaintiffs’ lead attorney, told NBC that the plaintiffs “are guardians of, and highly protective of, Elvis’s songs.”
The lawsuit also takes aim at Anthropic’s broader defense of AI development, arguing the company has justified similar infringement claims elsewhere by citing the value of technological progress. “While in other cases for copyright infringement, Defendant has waxed poetic about the necessity of progress and AI’s value to society, there is simply no reason — other than rote expediency — to have that progress come at the cost of copyright holders,” the filing states.
It further contends that the songs were created over decades, while Anthropic’s alleged use of them for commercial gain threatens to undercut their value in a fraction of that time. “The Works were created over periods of dozens of years, and Anthropic, by its infringing conduct, is destroying the value of these Works in a matter of a few years with only profit as its motive,” the complaint states.
The filing also points to the company’s finances. “Anthropic’s business model was admittedly and clearly: infringe now, and hope for a two-trillion-dollar IPO later,” it says, according to Music Business Worldwide. Anthropic made its IPO paperwork public Oct. 26, The Next Web reported.
The plaintiffs allege that Claude produced infringing output for all 274 works, though that claim is made “on information and belief.” The output examples in the complaint involve songs from other publishers’ suits, and it doesn’t show Claude reproducing a Presley song, Implicator.ai reported.
Anthropic’s Response
“We disagree with the claims and intend to defend this case fully,” an Anthropic spokesperson told NBC. The company has argued in other cases that training its models on copyrighted material is fair use, including at an Oct. 21 hearing in the music publishers’ case, Implicator.ai reported.
A Growing List Of Copyright Fights
The case adds to a growing list of copyright fights facing Anthropic. Busch also sued the company in August on behalf of Round Hill Music, in a case Music Business Worldwide reported could approach or exceed $1 billion. That complaint lists 500 compositions, and Round Hill plans to add more. Busch filed a similar suit for Reservoir on Oct. 21.
Universal Music Publishing Group, Concord and ABKCO sued Anthropic in 2023. BMG followed in March, and Sony Music Publishing and Warner Chappell filed suit in August.
Anthropic has already agreed to pay in a related area of its business. The company settled a class action last year with a group of authors for $1.5 billion after they accused Anthropic of using pirated copies of their books to train Claude. A judge gave the deal final approval in July, and NBC described it as the largest settlement in U.S. copyright history.
AI companies broadly have faced mounting legal pressure over training data. Music platforms Suno and Udio have each settled with some major labels, but Universal and Sony are still suing Suno, and Sony is still suing Udio.
What’s Next
The plaintiffs have asked for a jury trial. In the authors’ case, a judge ruled that training AI on lawfully acquired books was fair use but that obtaining pirated copies was not, and whether that reasoning applies to music is still an open question, MusicTech reported.
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