Elvis Presley rights holders sue Anthropic over song lyrics in AI training

Rights holders for Elvis Presley's music filed a copyright lawsuit against the AI company Anthropic in late October 2026. The plaintiffs include ABG EPE IP LLC, which holds Presley's intellectual property, along with music publishers, trusts and individuals.

The complaint says Anthropic used lyrics from 274 compositions recorded by Presley, including "Can't Help Falling in Love," "Don't Be Cruel" and "All Shook Up," to train its Claude models without permission. It also alleges that Claude can produce outputs closely mirroring the songs, and that Anthropic bypassed technical protections on lyrics sites and removed copyright information such as songwriter credits.

The plaintiffs seek up to $41.1 million in statutory copyright damages, plus damages under two other federal claims, and ask the court to order unauthorized copies destroyed, including those in training datasets. Anthropic said it disagrees with the claims and intends to defend the case.

The suit followed earlier litigation by authors over pirated books, which ended in a $1.5 billion settlement. It came about two weeks before the estate's separate case against Suno over AI voice cloning, showing the estate pursuing AI developers on more than one front.