Authentic Brands Group Sues Anthropic Over Elvis Songs
The lawsuit alleges Anthropic used 274 copyrighted tracks to train its AI models without permission.
Updated on Oct. 24, 2026 in Artificial Intelligence
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Authentic Brands Group has filed a lawsuit against AI developer Anthropic for the alleged unauthorized use of 274 Elvis Presley songs. The filing claims that the company ingested these copyrighted works to train its artificial intelligence models without permission.
Why it matters
The case highlights the expanding legal conflict over whether AI training processes constitute copyright infringement when involving proprietary creative catalogs. This litigation seeks to establish whether developers possess the right to ingest protected music to produce derivative output.
Authentic Brands Group claims that 274 songs from the Elvis Presley catalog were used to train AI models without authorization. The legal complaint asserts that this process enabled the creation of unlicensed derivative works.
The players
Authentic Brands Group
An intellectual property management firm that maintains control over the Elvis Presley music catalog and likeness rights.
Anthropic
An artificial intelligence startup that builds large language models and generative AI systems trained on massive datasets.
The details
The lawsuit alleges that Anthropic trained its models by ingesting millions of existing works, including protected music, without securing permission from rights holders. The complaint centers on the production of unlicensed derivative works—content generated by AI that mimics or utilizes the original copyrighted material. These claims aim to enforce exclusive intellectual property rights against the methods used to build generative AI systems.
Timeline
October 23, 2026: Lawsuit filed against Anthropic.
2024: Major music companies filed litigation against Suno.
2000s: Legal disputes occurred regarding digital downloads and Eminem's music.
The Tech Race
This case follows the precedent set by the 2024 litigation against Suno by major music companies, marking a continued effort to define IP boundaries in generative AI. It pits the rapid data-ingestion models used by firms like Anthropic against the traditional licensing structures of the music industry.
This lawsuit could force a shift in how AI companies license training data, potentially impacting the variety of creative content models are permitted to generate. Users of generative AI may see changes in output capabilities if courts rule that companies must secure explicit licenses for training materials.
The takeaway
The outcome of this case will define the scope of fair use in the context of large-scale AI training for creative industries. Observers should track upcoming court motions to see if the litigation results in a court-mandated licensing framework or restrictions on training data ingestion.
Further reading
Explore ongoing legal and technical developments in Artificial Intelligence.
Source note: This article includes information reported by Billboard.
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