Elvis estate sues Anthropic over AI training on 274 songs

The estate of Elvis Presley and affiliated music companies have sued Anthropic over the use of Presley recordings to train its Claude AI models. The complaint was filed on October 23, three days before Anthropic submitted its public offering registration statement to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.

The lawsuit covers 274 compositions associated with Presley, including "All Shook Up," "Can't Help Falling in Love," "Don't Be Cruel," and "Return to Sender." Plaintiffs allege Anthropic copied the songs without authorization and deleted copyright-management information, including composer and publisher data.

“We disagree with the claims and intend to defend this case fully.”

Plaintiffs are seeking up to $41.1 million in statutory copyright damages plus another $7.535 million under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, for a total claim of $48.6 million. They also want a federal court to seize or destroy Anthropic's training datasets, internal repositories, model weights, and server infrastructure carrying unauthorized copies of the music.

Anthropic said it disagrees with the claims and intends to defend the case fully. The company has warned investors that unfavorable copyright rulings could limit its use or distribution of impacted models or force it to retrain them at significant expense.

Anthropic faces several other copyright lawsuits from major music companies. Sony and Warner sued the company over alleged flagrant copyright violations involving thousands of works, while Universal Music and Concord Music Group previously filed claims over the downloading and training use of 20,000 songs.

The Presley estate's catalog is among the most valuable in recorded music history, with Presley having sold more than one billion records. The songs at issue were recorded in the 1950s and 1960s, decades before Claude existed.

If the court grants the requested seizure or destruction, Anthropic could be required to retrain affected models, adding a material risk ahead of its planned Nasdaq share sale.