Authentic Brands Group Files $41M Copyright Lawsuit Against Anthropic Over Elvis Presley Catalog

The Authentic Brands Group, the Tennessee-based rights holder for Elvis Presley’s estate, has filed a $41 million lawsuit against AI company Anthropic. The complaint alleges that Anthropic infringed copyright by training its Claude AI model on 274 of Presley’s songs without permission, including classics such as “Can’t Help Falling in Love,” “Don’t Be Cruel,” “Farther Along,” “If You Think I Don’t Need You,” and “Run On.”

Filed on October 23, the petition seeks approximately $150,000 in damages per song, aggregating to $41 million. The suit was brought by Authentic Brands Group and co-plaintiffs holding Presley’s rights. In a statement, lead counsel Richard Busch asserted, ‘The Elvis Plaintiffs bring this action to enforce these exclusive rights against the defendant that has built its entire business model on copyright infringement at a scale never seen before.’ The group emphasized their deep protectiveness over the iconic compositions. Pitchfork has requested comment from Anthropic representatives.

While major labels and music publishers have previously levied claims against Anthropic, this action represents one of the first high-profile cases in which a single artist’s catalog owner has sued for copyright infringement. The lawsuit alleges that Anthropic illegally used the specified Presley songs to generate “unlicensed derivative works” through its Claude platform.

The lawsuit contends that even after the defendant implemented purported ‘guardrails’ following prior litigation, the latest Claude iterations continue to infringe. According to the filing, when prompted to recreate songs ‘for a modern audience,’ Claude admitted: ‘These renders keep landing very close to the originals: same structure, same hooks reused with light rewording, and full sets of verses/choruses/bridges.’ The filing argues this trajectory moves beyond ‘inspired by’ into direct reproduction of copyrighted material, even with reworded lyrics.

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