Anthropic sued over use of Elvis Presley songs in Claude training

Rights holders to songs made famous by Elvis Presley have filed a federal copyright infringement lawsuit against Anthropic, alleging it used protected music and lyrics without permission to train its Claude AI models. The complaint, filed Friday in federal court in California, alleges unlawful copying of 274 songs associated with Presley, including “Can’t Help Falling in Love,” “All Shook Up,” “Don’t Be Cruel,” “A Little Less Conversation” and “Return to Sender.”

The plaintiffs also allege that Claude continued producing material closely resembling copyrighted songs after Anthropic introduced safeguards intended to prevent those outputs. When prompted to recreate songs for a modern audience, the chatbot allegedly generated versions that preserved the originals’ structure and recognizable hooks despite changes to the lyrics.

A subsidiary of Authentic Brands Group and other music rights holders brought the lawsuit, seeking approximately $41.1 million in statutory copyright damages, along with additional damages under other claims. Anthropic said it disagrees with the allegations and intends to defend the case fully. The dispute adds to mounting scrutiny of AI developers’ use of copyrighted material for model training.