Elvis Presley's rights holders sue Anthropic saying it trained AI on his music - NBC News

Share Add NBC News to Google Oct. 25, 2026, 3:11 PM EDT By Angela Yang and Austin Mullen The owners of Elvis Presley’s music have sued Anthropic for allegedly using his copyrighted lyrics without permission to train its AI models and generating infringing versions of his songs. In a lawsuit filed Friday, Authentic Brands Group, the licensing platform that controls Presley’s intellectual property — along with other companies, trusts and individuals who own rights to his music — accused Anthropic of infringing copyrights to 274 songs without any license or payment. These span some of Presley’s biggest hits, including “All Shook Up,” “Can’t Help Falling in Love,” “Don’t Be Cruel,” “A Little Less Conversation” and “Return to Sender.” “The Elvis Plaintiffs’ iconic collective catalog contains some of the most groundbreaking, revolutionary, influential, and enduring musical compositions in human history,” the lawsuit stated. The plaintiffs allege that the infringement has occurred throughout “the entire development” of Anthropic’s flagship Claude models and continues today as users generate outputs that reproduce copyrighted lyrics or create unauthorized adaptations of the songs. “As we say in the lawsuit, the Elvis Plaintiffs are guardians of, and highly protective of, Elvis’s song which are some of the most iconic of all time,” attorney Richard Busch wrote in a statement. A spokesperson for Anthropic wrote: “We disagree with the claims and intend to defend this case fully.” Elvis Presley performs circa 1975. Fotos International / Getty The complaint further describes Anthropic as having “built its entire business model on infringing copyrights at an unfathomable scale,” pointing to the alleged mass scraping of internet content and pirating of books to develop its Claude language models. Last year, Anthropic agreed to a landmark $1.5 billion settlement in a copyright infringement lawsuit filed by authors who alleged the company had illegally used pirated copies of their books to train AI models. It was the largest settlement in the history of American copyright cases. The lawsuit by Presley’s rights holders comes amid a larger wave of lawsuits against Anthropic and other AI companies for allegedly using copyrighted musical works without consent or compensation. For Subscribers FOR SUBSCRIBERS Israeli settler attacks and military lockdown upend Palestinian olive harvest FOR SUBSCRIBERS UChicago fraternities tried self-policing. A decade later, they’re asking what went wrong. FOR SUBSCRIBERS They didn’t know their uncle was dead. Then they learned a cop allegedly stole his home and identity FOR SUBSCRIBERS China’s first AI film hits theaters, but people aren’t rushing to see it FOR SUBSCRIBERS Susan Collins won women in 2020. 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A decade later, they’re asking what went wrong. FOR SUBSCRIBERS They didn’t know their uncle was dead. Then they learned a cop allegedly stole his home and identity FOR SUBSCRIBERS China’s first AI film hits theaters, but people aren’t rushing to see it FOR SUBSCRIBERS Susan Collins won women in 2020. How they break in 2026 could decide the Maine Senate race. FOR SUBSCRIBERS ‘On the brink of a crisis’: Farmers’ troubles imperil Iowa GOP after years of dominance FOR SUBSCRIBERS Records reveal the troubled past of Amy Acton’s estranged mother and stepfather FOR SUBSCRIBERS James Talarico rallies young voters in Austin who are critical to his Senate hopes FOR SUBSCRIBERS ‘Practice-changing’ new lung cancer immunotherapy improves survival FOR SUBSCRIBERS Ramaswamy campaign switches to shorter version of ad featuring Amy Acton’s estranged mother FOR SUBSCRIBERS She had five siblings, but only she survived childhood with her father FOR SUBSCRIBERS AI is helping cyber defenders — and hackers — find vulnerabilities at a dizzying pace FOR SUBSCRIBERS Democrats see an opening in secretary of state races in red terrain FOR SUBSCRIBERS Records offer a picture of the Oregon school shooter’s tumultuous home life FOR SUBSCRIBERS Everything was going great — and then he got caught in Lori Vallow Daybell’s crosshairs Slide 1 of 1 In January, Universal Music, Concord Music Group and ABKCO Music expanded their lawsuit against Anthropic over the alleged infringement of copyrighted song lyrics. BMG Rights Management, Sony Music Publishing and Warner Chappell Music filed similar lawsuits against Anthropic this year. Anthropic and the AI music generation company Suno were also recently hit with lawsuits from the independent music publisher Round Hill — which is represented by Busch, the lead attorney for Presley’s rights holders — and the independent music company Reservoir Media . “Even after the Defendant supposedly put up ‘guardrails’ after being sued, in one of its latest iterations, Claude continues to infringe,” the Presley rights holders state in their lawsuit. The complaint notes that when asked recently to re-create specific songs “for a modern audience,” Claude did so. “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 complaint said. “That’s edging past ‘inspired by’ into reproducing the copyrighted song, even when the words are swapped out.” Presley’s rights holders are seeking $41.1 million in statutory copyright damages — up to $150,000 for each of the 274 works they alleged were willfully infringed — according to the complaint. They also demand a permanent injunction to prevent Anthropic from “further infringing” on Presley’s works and an order for the company to destroy all unauthorized copies of the copyrighted works. Share Add NBC News to Google Angela Yang Angela Yang is a culture and trends reporter for NBC News. Austin Mullen