In a move that will surprise absolutely no one who has watched the AI copyright wars unfold, the licensing group that owns the rights to Elvis Presley's music has filed a $41 million lawsuit against AI company Anthropic. The Tennessee-based Authentic Brands Group alleges that Anthropic trained its AI model Claude on 274 of Presley's songs without permission, including "Can't Help Falling in Love," "Don't Be Cruel," "Farther Along," "If You Think I Don't Need You," and "Run On." Because nothing says "the king" like an AI that can't help falling into legal trouble.

The lawsuit, filed on October 23 and viewed by Pitchfork, seeks roughly $150,000 in damages per song, which adds up to a cool $41 million. Authentic Brands Group filed alongside a number of co-plaintiffs with ownership over Presley rights. Lead attorney Richard Busch wrote in a statement: "The Elvis Plaintiffs bring this action to enforce these exclusive rights against the defendant that has built its entire business model based on copyright infringement at a scale never seen before." He added, "The Elvis Plaintiffs are deeply protective of these iconic songs." Pitchfork has reached out to representatives for Anthropic for comment, presumably while humming "Suspicious Minds."

While major labels and music publishers have filed claims against Anthropic before, this is one of the first high-profile cases where the owner of a single artist's catalog has sued for copyright infringement. The lawsuit claims that Anthropic illegally used the Presley songs to create "unlicensed derivative works" with Claude. Because if there's one thing AI needs, it's more Elvis - said no one ever, until the lawyers got involved.

The lawsuit further alleges that even after Anthropic supposedly put up "guardrails" following previous lawsuits, Claude continues to infringe. According to the filing, when recently asked to recreate specific songs "for a modern audience," Claude complied and admitted: "These renders keep landing very close to the originals: same structure, same hooks reused with light rewording, and full sets of verses/choruses/bridges." The lawsuit argues that this is "edging past 'inspired by' into reproducing the copyrighted song, even when the words are swapped out." In other words, Claude may have left the building, but it apparently took the melody with it.

So far, Anthropic has not commented, but we can only assume they're all shook up.