Elvis Presley Music Catalog Holder Sues Anthropic Over AI Training
Authentic Brands Group, the holder of Elvis Presley's music catalog and portrait rights, has filed a lawsuit against Anthropic in late October 2026. The lawsuit alleges that Anthropic used 274 of Presley's songs without authorization to train its AI models. This is one of the first major lawsuits brought directly by an artist's estate against an AI developer regarding music catalogs. The outcome could set a significant legal precedent for how AI companies utilize existing copyrighted music for model training. The plaintiff is seeking approximately $41 million in total damages, claiming $150,000 for each of the 274 infringed tracks. The lawsuit also alleges that Anthropic's safeguards to prevent the model from generating infringing music are ineffective and that the company acted knowingly.
## BACKGROUND
Anthropic is an American software company that develops the Claude series of large language models, which are trained using vast amounts of data including text and media. AI companies face increasing scrutiny from the music industry over using copyrighted materials without permission to train generative models.