Presley-related rights holders reportedly filed a lawsuit against Anthropic on October 23, 2026, alleging that the company used 274 Elvis Presley songs to train its AI models without permission. The plaintiffs also allege that Claude generated infringing rewrites. Those claims are allegations, not court findings.
What the lawsuit alleges about training and Claude
The plaintiffs allege that Anthropic used 274 songs, including “All Shook Up,” “Can’t Help Falling in Love” and “Don’t Be Cruel,” in model training without authorization. They separately allege that Claude produced rewrites with recognizable song structures and hooks, including after safeguards were introduced.
A separate account of the complaint names web-scraped material, Musixmatch, LyricFind and The Pile’s YouTube Subtitles section as alleged routes through which lyrics reached training material. It also names Claude Haiku 4.5 and Claude Sonnet 5 in connection with the alleged rewrites. These details remain allegations attributed to the plaintiffs.
Does an alleged rewrite prove that a song appeared in training data? No. The claims about training use and Claude’s outputs are distinct; an output by itself does not establish the source of the material used to train a model.
How the reported damages requests add up
The plaintiffs reportedly seek $150,000 for each of the 274 allegedly infringed tracks, a calculated $41.1 million. A separate account of the complaint reports two additional requested amounts, bringing the reported combined demand to $48.635 million. These are requests for relief, not an award.
| Requested category | Reported amount | Calculation basis |
| Alleged infringement of 274 tracks | $41.1 million | 274 × $150,000 per track |
| Alleged circumvention of access controls | $685,000 | Additional amount requested |
| Alleged removal of song titles and writer credits | $6.85 million | Additional amount requested |
| Combined reported demand | $48.635 million | $41.1 million + $685,000 + $6.85 million |
The $41.1 million figure covers the per-track request alone. The $48.635 million calculation also includes the two additional categories. Anthropic was not reported to have been ordered to pay these amounts.
A separate case from the Sony and Warner lawsuit
This Presley-related lawsuit is separate from the earlier case brought by Sony Music Publishing and Warner Chappell Music against Anthropic. NeoTeo covered that proceeding in its earlier report on the Sony and Warner lawsuit.
