Disclosure: BreezyScroll uses Anthropic’s Claude to help draft articles. Our editor-in-chief edited this piece.
The companies that own Elvis Presley’s songs have sued Anthropic, the maker of the Claude chatbot. They filed the suit on Friday, Oct. 23, in federal court in San Francisco. It alleges that Anthropic used 274 Presley songs to train Claude without permission or payment.
Anthropic disputes the claims. “We disagree with the claims and intend to defend this case fully,” a spokesperson said. Pitchfork and the Los Angeles Times both carried the statement. No court has ruled on any of the allegations.
Who is suing, and over which songs
The lead plaintiff is a subsidiary of Authentic Brands Group, NME reported. Authentic Brands controls much of Presley’s intellectual property, and other companies that hold rights to his music joined the suit. NME and the Los Angeles Times both credit Billboard’s reporting.
Songs named in coverage include “Can’t Help Falling in Love,” “Don’t Be Cruel” and “Return to Sender.” The suit concerns the songs as compositions, meaning the music and lyrics, according to NME.
What the complaint alleges
The plaintiffs allege that Anthropic copied the songs to train Claude and paid nothing for them. The complaint says the songs went “into a permanent, general-purpose central library intended to be retained indefinitely,” the Los Angeles Times reported. It also alleges that Anthropic stripped identifying information from the works and continued after receiving notice.
A second set of claims concerns what Claude produces. The suit says the chatbot creates “unlicensed derivative works,” Pitchfork reported. It also alleges that the infringement continued after Anthropic added guardrails.
The filing quotes a response it attributes to Claude. According to the complaint, a recent prompt asked Claude to recreate specific songs “for a modern audience.” It replied: “These renders keep landing very close to the originals: same structure, same hooks reused with light rewording, and full sets of verses/choruses/bridges. That’s edging past ‘inspired by’ into reproducing the copyrighted song, even when the words are swapped out.” The coverage we read doesn’t say who ran that prompt or which Claude model answered it.
Richard Busch, the plaintiffs’ lead attorney, said Anthropic “has built its entire business model based on copyright infringement at a scale never seen before.” Busch previously represented Marvin Gaye’s estate in the “Blurred Lines” case.
How the $41 million figure works
Federal copyright law sets statutory damages at $750 to $30,000 per work. If a court finds the infringement willful, it can award up to $150,000 per work. The plaintiffs seek up to that amount for each song. At $150,000 for each of 274 songs, the total is $41.1 million, the figure Pitchfork and NME reported.
The Los Angeles Times put the request at roughly $50 million, plus court costs and attorneys’ fees. The coverage doesn’t explain the gap. The complaint was not yet on the public CourtListener docket mirror on Monday, so we could not check it.
Anthropic’s other copyright cases
Anthropic has fought similar claims before. In Bartz v. Anthropic, authors sued over books Anthropic downloaded from the pirate sites Library Genesis and Pirate Library Mirror. In June 2025 the court ruled that training on books was fair use, the settlement website says. It left for trial whether the downloading was fair use. Anthropic agreed to a $1.5 billion settlement, about $3,000 per work. A judge granted final approval on July 20, 2026, and the administrator expects to send first payments by Nov. 15.
Music publishers have a separate suit. Concord, Universal Music Publishing and ABKCO sued in 2023 over Claude reproducing lyrics. In that case, Concord Music Group v. Anthropic, Judge Eumi K. Lee heard summary judgment arguments on Oct. 21. Sony Music Publishing and Warner Chappell filed another suit over lyrics and sheet music in August, NME reported.
Pitchfork called the Presley case one of the first high-profile suits by the owner of a single artist’s catalog. For more on the AI industry, see our explainer on the AI bubble and our look at what Anthropic pays its staff.
The next date in the music cases is Oct. 30. Judge Lee will then continue a hearing on expert-witness motions in the Concord case.
