Anthropic sued for $41m over alleged unauthorized AI training on Elvis Presley songs

Anthropic is heading to court over allegations that it used songs by Elvis Presley (1935–1977) to train its Claude AI model without authorization.

Several music rights organizations, including Authentic Brands Group, which manages 274 of Presley's signature songs, filed a copyright infringement lawsuit against Anthropic on Friday in the US District Court for the Northern District of California, according to the Los Angeles Times and NBC News.

The plaintiffs alleged in the complaint that Anthropic "built its business model on copyright infringement of an unprecedented scale," adding that the company "used works without permission, monopolized illegally obtained profits, and disregarded the rights of creators and rights holders."

The suit claims Anthropic stored Presley's songs in a central library and used them to train its next-generation Claude models, enabling users to create derivative works without compensating the rights holders.

For example, when a Claude user asked the AI to compose a song for contemporary music listeners, Claude reportedly produced a track using structures and choruses similar to Presley's originals.

The catalog at issue includes some of Presley's most recognizable songs, among them "All Shook Up" and "Can't Help Falling in Love."

The plaintiffs are seeking up to $150,000 per song in damages — a total of $41.1 million for all 274 works.

They also called for a permanent injunction barring Anthropic from further copyright infringement and the destruction of all unauthorized copies.

Anthropic said it disagrees with the claims and signaled it would mount an aggressive defense in court.

Similar suits with Sony Music, Warner Chappell Music

Claude logo [Getty Images]

Anthropic is also facing similar litigation from major labels Sony Music and Warner Chappell Music.

Sony Music and Warner Chappell Music sued Anthropic in the US District Court for the Northern District of California on Aug. 29 (local time), alleging the company used the lyrics and sheet music of tens of thousands of songs to train its AI without authorization.

Named as defendants alongside the Anthropic corporate entity were CEO Dario Amodei and co-founder Benjamin Mann, who oversees technology.

The two labels allege that Anthropic obtained pop music sheet music and lyrics through pirated books downloaded from illegal sites, files scanned from physical books purchased for that purpose, and data scraped in bulk from websites in violation of their terms of service — all of which were then used to train its AI models.

They contend that thousands of songs were used for training without permission, citing prominent examples including Mariah Carey's "All I Want for Christmas Is You" and Taylor Swift's "Paper Rings."

Anthropic told tech publication TechCrunch that it "disagrees with their claims and intends to defend itself vigorously in court."

Anthropic previously reached a settlement with authors over the use of pirated books to train its AI models, agreeing to pay $1.5 billion.

yul@heraldcorp.com