Authentic Brands Group Sues Anthropic Over Elvis Music

The owner of Elvis Presley's music catalog is suing AI developer Anthropic for unauthorized use of 274 copyrighted songs.

Updated on Oct. 24, 2026 in Artificial Intelligence

Isometric editorial illustration of server rack cooling vents and metallic industrial lattice framework in muted tones. — Authentic Brands Group sued AI developer Anthropic on October 23, 2026, alleging the unauthorized use of 274 Elvis Presley songs for model training. AI Illustration. Upload story photo >

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Authentic Brands Group filed a lawsuit on October 23, 2026, alleging that Anthropic used 274 Elvis Presley songs to train its artificial intelligence models without permission. The legal action asserts that these materials were ingested to create technology capable of producing unlicensed derivative works.

Why it matters

The suit seeks to enforce exclusive intellectual property rights against the use of copyrighted music in artificial intelligence training. It highlights the growing tension between creative rights holders and technology firms regarding how generative AI models are built.

The lawsuit involves 274 songs from the Elvis Presley music catalog that were allegedly ingested for model training. The core technical dispute concerns whether Anthropic's systems effectively produce unlicensed derivative works from this ingested data.

The players

Authentic Brands Group

This company manages a portfolio of global entertainment and fashion brands including the intellectual property rights to Elvis Presley's music catalog.

Anthropic

This is an American artificial intelligence research company that develops large language models and other AI technologies.

The details

Authentic Brands Group claims that the unauthorized training process utilizes protected intellectual property to power AI systems. This legal challenge targets the specific mechanism of ingesting millions of existing works to fuel generative model development.

October 23, 2026: Lawsuit against Anthropic was filed.
2024: Suno was sued by major music companies.
2000s: Eminem litigation over digital downloads occurred.

The Tech Race

This case follows the pattern set by the 2024 lawsuit against Suno by major music companies, marking an escalation in the industry-wide legal battle over generative AI training. It reflects a shift as rights holders move to establish definitive precedents regarding intellectual property in the AI era.

The outcome of this case may determine how AI tools access and utilize consumer-facing media in the future. If successful, such litigation could limit the music libraries or content features available within popular artificial intelligence platforms.

The takeaway

This lawsuit signals a continued effort by entertainment conglomerates to secure legal boundaries around AI training data. Owners of intellectual property are increasingly turning to the courts to protect their assets from being used by emerging generative technologies.