Elvis comes with a licensing business. The permission slip is practically a backing vocalist.

A unit of Authentic Brands Group, which largely controls his intellectual property, joined other rights owners in suing Anthropic on October 23. Their allegation: the company behind Claude trained its models on 274 copyrighted songs without permission, including “Can’t Help Falling in Love” and “Don’t Be Cruel.” [1]

That puts a specific commercial dispute underneath the famous face. These owners sell permission to use Elvis. They allege Anthropic used the compositions to build technology producing unlicensed derivative works. Anthropic did not immediately respond to Billboard’s request for comment. [1]

Music’s appetite for an old catalog is hardly mysterious. Drake’s latest certifications made him the first artist past 350 million RIAA-certified units. The industry has excellent instruments for celebrating accumulated consumption. Permission requires separate paperwork. [2]

AI companies argue that training qualifies as fair use, an issue still pending across dozens of lawsuits. That dispute reaches directly into Authentic’s licensing business: the owners are asking copyright law to give them control over this use of the songs. A successful fair-use defense would leave them unable to require a training license for the use challenged here. [1]