Elvis Presley's Rights Holders Sue Anthropic Over AI

Elvis has left the building and walked into an AI lawsuit. The companies that own his music have sued Anthropic, the maker of Claude, saying it trained its models on 274 of his songs without a license. I first saw it in an Engadget post on X, and Billboard was the first outlet to report the filing.

What happened

Authentic Brands Group, which controls Presley's name, likeness and catalog, filed the complaint on Friday, October 23, in federal court in the Northern District of California. Raleigh Music Publishing and a handful of trusts signed on too. The case is listed as ABG EPE IP LLC v. Anthropic.

The claim is about lyrics and compositions rather than recordings, which makes sense because Claude doesn't make audio. According to NBC News, the plaintiffs say the copying went on through "the entire development" of Claude and still happens when users get it to spit out lyrics or rework the songs. Titles named include Can't Help Falling in Love, All Shook Up, Don't Be Cruel, Return to Sender and A Little Less Conversation.

On damages, they're going for the max: $150,000 a song, the ceiling for willful infringement. Times 274, that's $41.1 million, or somewhere near ₹390 crore. Engadget notes the suit also accuses Anthropic of getting around DRM and stripping copyright information from the works, and those extra counts could push the total higher. They're also asking for an injunction and for Anthropic to destroy its copies.

Anthropic's response was short: "We disagree with the claims and intend to defend this case fully." It has argued before that training on copyrighted material is fair use.

Why it matters

Anthropic is already fighting several music suits, from Concord and Universal to Sony and Warner, some asking for billions. What's new here, as The Guardian points out, is who's suing. It's one of the first big cases brought by a single artist's estate instead of a label or trade group.

Honestly I think that's clever. When a giant label sues an AI firm, people shrug, because it's just two corporations arguing. Put Elvis's name on it, list the songs, and slap a price on each one, and suddenly a jury has something it can picture. If it goes well, I'd expect other estates to try the same thing.

What to do

• If you use Claude, nothing changes for now. Lawsuits like this take years, and the service isn't going anywhere.
• Careful with lyrics. Pasting full song lyrics from a chatbot into a video, a post or a product can land you in copyright trouble no matter how the AI got them.
• If you make music, it's worth checking how your publisher or distributor handles AI licensing, because deals and opt-outs are starting to show up in contracts.

If you'd rather keep your own AI chats off someone else's servers, my guide to running models locally with LM Studio shows how to set it up on a Windows PC.