Entities controlling Elvis Presley's music catalog sued Anthropic on Friday, October 23, in a case titled ABE EPE LLC v. Anthropic, first reported by Billboard. The plaintiffs — a subsidiary of Authentic Brands Group, which controls much of Presley's intellectual property, together with other companies holding rights to his music — allege that Anthropic infringed the copyrights of 274 Presley songs by using them to train its Claude models without permission, including 'Can't Help Falling in Love,' 'All Shook Up,' 'Don't Be Cruel,' 'A Little Less Conversation' and 'Return to Sender.'

The suit seeks $150,000 per song, roughly $41 million in total. It also alleges that Claude keeps producing infringing output despite guardrails Anthropic put in place after earlier suits: when asked to recreate specific songs 'for a modern audience,' the filing says, Claude produced versions that kept the original structure and hooks with light rewording, and acknowledged as much itself.

Billboard calls the suit the most prominent legal action so far brought on behalf of a single musician, and it joins earlier copyright cases against Anthropic from music publishers including Universal Music Publishing, Concord and BMG. Anthropic had not responded to requests for comment on Saturday; the company has previously maintained that training AI models on copyrighted material can be protected under US fair use law. Every allegation in the filing remains unproven.