Elvis Catalog Owners Sue Anthropic for $41M Over Training Data
Authentic Brands Group has filed a federal lawsuit against Anthropic, alleging that the Claude model was trained on 274 copyrighted Elvis Presley songs. The plaintiffs seek approximately $41 million in damages, challenging whether previous fair use rulings regarding book training data apply to music and if Anthropic's guardrails effectively prevent infringing outputs.
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Rohan Paul (@rohanpaul_ai) · 2026-10-25 08
Elvis Presley’s music owners sued Anthropic for about $41M, alleging Claude was trained on 274 songs.
Authentic Brands Group filed the federal case, ABE EPE LLC v. Anthropic, alongside several publishers that co-own the catalog.
Its demand multiplies those 274 works by $150K, the maximum statutory damages US copyright law allows per work for willful infringement.
It targets both training and outputs, alleging Claude reproduced material from nearly every song catalog online, even after Anthropic added guardrails following earlier publisher suits.
As evidence, it quotes Claude admitting that its rewrites of specific songs “for a modern audience” reused the originals’ structure and hooks with light rewording.
Anthropic had not responded when the suit was first reported, and no court has tested any of these claims.
In 2025, a federal judge ruled that training Claude on lawfully purchased books was fair use, a precedent Anthropic will likely cite against the training claims.
Near-copies of lyrics in Claude’s answers sit outside that ruling, so the case may hinge on how reliably Anthropic’s guardrails block them.
