On Friday 23 October, US time, the owners of Elvis Presley’s music sued Anthropic in federal court in San Francisco, the Los Angeles Times reported. Billboard was first to report the suit, according to the Guardian.
The complaint alleges that Anthropic infringed the copyrights in 274 Presley songs, without a licence and without payment, to train its Claude artificial intelligence models, NBC News reported.
The songs named include All Shook Up, Can’t Help Falling in Love, Don’t Be Cruel, A Little Less Conversation and Return to Sender, according to NBC News.
The plaintiffs are led by Authentic Brands Group, which controls Presley’s intellectual property. They are joined by other companies, trusts and individuals who own rights to his music, NBC News reported.
The complaint describes the catalogue in these terms.
“The Elvis Plaintiffs’ iconic collective catalog contains some of the most groundbreaking, revolutionary, influential, and enduring musical compositions in human history,” it says, as quoted by NBC News.
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What the Complaint Alleges
The claims are not limited to training. The plaintiffs allege infringement through “the entire development” of the Claude models, and say it continues as users generate outputs that reproduce the lyrics or adapt the songs, according to NBC News.
They also allege that Anthropic kept the songs in a permanent central library, and that subsets were copied again from that library to train later Claude models, the Los Angeles Times reported.
The Los Angeles Times quoted two further passages from the complaint.
“Defendant has built its entire business model based on copyright infringement at a scale never seen before,” the complaint says.
“Anthropic ran roughshod over the rights of countless creatives and rightsholders,” it says in another passage.
These are allegations in a civil complaint. No court has ruled on any of them.
Damages and Anthropic’s Reply
The plaintiffs seek US$150,000 for each infringed song, about US$41 million in total, according to the Guardian. Their lead attorney is Richard Busch, the Guardian reported.
Anthropic responded on Sunday 25 October, US time, the Los Angeles Times reported.
An Anthropic spokesperson said, according to NBC News: “We disagree with the claims and intend to defend this case fully.”
The company has faced a copyright claim before. In 2025, Anthropic agreed a US$1.5 billion settlement of a lawsuit by authors who alleged it had used pirated copies of their books to train AI models, the largest settlement in US copyright history, NBC News reported.
That case concerned books. The Presley suit concerns songs, and the plaintiffs allege both that they were used in training and that Claude can reproduce or adapt them for users.
A Growing Queue of Music Cases
The Presley complaint is not the only one of its kind. The filing notes at least half a dozen federal suits pending in San Francisco over musical compositions used to train AI, according to the Los Angeles Times.
That places the case in a court where questions about music and AI training are already waiting to be heard. The complaint was filed on 23 October, US time, and nothing in the case had been decided as at 26 October.
AI companies are facing legal questions of other kinds too. In a separate matter, an OpenAI engineer was charged over an alleged hidden recording device, as reported here on 14 October.
The suit covers 274 songs, and the damages sought come to about US$41 million, the Guardian reported. The case is before the federal court in San Francisco, and Anthropic says it intends to defend it fully.
More on AI and the tech industry is in our Technology archive.
Sources: The Guardian, “Anthropic sued for allegedly using 274 Elvis Presley songs to train AI models”, 26 October 2026 (https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/oct/25/elvis-presley-anthropic-lawsuit-ai-models-music); NBC News, “Elvis Presley’s rights holders sue Anthropic, saying it trained AI on his music”, 25 October 2026 (https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/tech-news/elvis-presleys-rights-holders-sue-anthropic-saying-trained-ai-music-rcna605551); Los Angeles Times, “Elvis Presley catalog owners sue Anthropic alleging copyright infringement”, 25 October 2026 (https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2026-10-25/elvis-rights-holder-sues-anthropic-says-songs-illegally-used-to-train-ai)
Photo: MGM publicity still, 1957, public domain, via the Library of Congress and Wikimedia Commons.
Elvis Presley in a 1957 publicity photograph for the film Jailhouse Rock.
