Elvis Presley rights holders and Eminem's publisher file suits against Suno

Suno, the AI music generator, faces two new lawsuits. Rights holders of Elvis Presley's music and Eight Mile Style, the publisher of many of Eminem's songs, filed separate complaints against the company on November 6 in federal court in Northern California. Both say Suno copied the artists' work to train its system and lets users produce music that imitates them.

The Presley suit relies on Tennessee's Ensuring Likeness Voice and Image Security (ELVIS) Act. The law, passed in 2024, protects artists against unauthorised commercial use of their voice and likeness, including AI clones. The cases add to a growing list of legal challenges over who may use an artist's catalogue and identity to train and sell generative music tools.

The Presley complaint

According to reporting by The Daily Star, the Presley plaintiffs include Authentic Brands Group and Raleigh Music Publishing, along with other rights holders. The 51-page complaint alleges that Suno copied 859 Presley compositions to train its AI system. It also argues that users can generate music that reproduces Presley's "rich vocal timbre" without permission.

The language in the complaint is pointed. The Verge quotes the lawyers as writing that "Suno has mechanically encoded itself with artists' identities, hard-work, creativity, and time, and harnessed them all for a consistent conveyor belt of cold hard cash." Elsewhere they write that "Suno's ravenous race to the bottom aims to make human creativity obsolete, coldly replicating without a license in seconds what takes years to learn, struggle with, maintain, and endlessly attempt to make better and perfect." One line of the filing reads: "The next Elvis won't pick up a guitar."

The Verge notes that the new suits closely mirror one filed in September by Americana singer Jason Isbell and other musicians. That case claimed Suno created imitations of the plaintiffs but did not directly allege copyright infringement.

The Eminem complaint

Eight Mile Style is a publisher based in Ferndale, Michigan. It owns or administers nearly 270 Eminem compositions. Eminem himself is not a plaintiff. The same legal team filed both suits. It includes attorney Richard Busch, who represented Marvin Gaye's estate in the "Blurred Lines" case.

The Detroit Free Press reports that the suit seeks more than $41 million. That figure comes from the statutory maximum of $150,000 for each of 269 works, about $40.4 million, plus about $672,000 for allegedly removing copyright management information embedded in the songs.

The complaint alleges that Suno built its business on infringement "at a scale heretofore unseen." It cites Suno's own disclosure in court that its model was trained on "essentially all music files of reasonable quality that are accessible on the open Internet." It points to a track titled "Slim Shady x Rosefalls" that allegedly uses an AI-generated image of Eminem and vocals derived from his voice. It says some generated tracks reproduce or closely resemble lyrics from "Lose Yourself," "The Real Slim Shady" and "Houdini." According to the Free Press, the complaint also says Suno's block on artist names can be bypassed with descriptive terms, and that leaked Suno source code shows Eminem's music and lyrics being scraped from YouTube and Genius.com. None of these allegations has been tested in court.

Suno's response and its other cases

Suno spokesperson Cat McCormack told The Verge: "Suno exists to help people create new, original music, not to trade on anyone's name or likeness, and we prohibit any unauthorized use of an artist's work." She said the company does not allow prompts naming specific artists or songs, uses third-party providers to screen uploaded audio and lyrics for misuse, and will "continue to add new safeguards that protect artists and our users."

The company is already defending several cases. The Verge lists suits from Sony, Universal Music Group, Isbell and Reservoir Media, among others. The recording industry sued Suno in June 2024 on behalf of major labels. Since then, according to the Free Press, BMG and Warner Music Group have reached licensing deals with Suno, while Universal, which is Eminem's label, remains a plaintiff.

The two new complaints test two different legal routes. The Eminem case is a conventional copyright claim over training data and output. The Presley case adds a state law written specifically for voice cloning, one of the first times a large catalogue owner has used that law against an AI music company.

What it means for work

Suno sells song generation that lets anyone produce a finished track from a text prompt, a task that once required singers, writers and producers. These suits ask whether that output can draw on specific artists' recordings, voices and lyrics without a licence or payment. If the ELVIS Act claim holds, a singer's voice would become something that has to be licensed separately from the songs. That would affect session vocalists and impersonators as much as famous estates. The deals Suno has already signed with Warner and BMG suggest one likely outcome: licensed training with payments to rights holders. That arrangement would mostly benefit catalogue owners and does little for working musicians who own no catalogue. Whether prompt filters are enough to stop imitation, and who is liable when they fail, is still undecided.