Elvis vs. AI: Presley estate and Eminem's publisher sue Suno

What's going on

AI music generator Suno is now up against two of the biggest names in music history. On Friday, November 6, 2026, the rights holders of Elvis Presley sued the company in US federal court in the Northern District of California. According to Billboard, the plaintiff is Elvis Presley Enterprises, a subsidiary of licensing giant Authentic Brands Group (ABG), which controls Presley's name, image, voice and much of his song catalog. Variety lists a group of plaintiffs, including ABG, Raleigh Music Publishing and other Presley rights holders. The complaint runs 51 pages.

The same lawyers filed a second suit that day, this time on behalf of Eight Mile Style. The publisher, based in Ferndale, Michigan, controls hundreds of Eminem songs, including "Lose Yourself", "Without Me", "'Till I Collapse", "Stan" and "The Real Slim Shady". According to Variety, Eminem himself is not a party to the case.

Suno is one of the best-known AI services that can turn a short text description into a complete song with vocals.

The heart of the Elvis suit: the voice

What's new here isn't the claim that Suno trained its models on copyrighted songs. That claim is in there too, naming tracks such as "Can't Help Falling in Love", "Don't Be Cruel", "A Little Less Conversation", "All Shook Up", "Return to Sender" and "(You're the) Devil in Disguise". But the focus is the voice. Suno allegedly lets users clone Presley's "distinctive and iconic voice". The complaint describes that voice in remarkable detail:

"Elvis' voice had an unmistakably rich timbre, with a warm, velvety resonance and perfectly deployed vibrato, combined with his ability to vary technique and delivery within a song and across different musical styles."

That description matters, because the court has to decide what exactly about a voice is protected and whether an AI output actually imitates it. The complaint includes links to videos of Suno-generated songs that sound a lot like Presley. Attorney Richard Busch of the law firm Adams & Reese writes that these are "NOT examples of Elvis Presley singing. They are synthetic and unlicensed uses of Elvis' voice and likeness. There are hundreds to thousands more of them."

In other cases, Suno has said its current models don't allow artist names in prompts (the text instructions you give the AI) and don't imitate real voices. The plaintiffs call that "demonstrably false". As recently as last month, they say, Suno generated an Elvis clone when his name appeared only in the lyrics. Type a musician's name like "Elvis" into Suno's "Create" feature, and you get results that "copy and reproduce the distinctive and recognizable characteristics of his voice".

The language of the complaint is fierce. Suno allegedly "stole" Elvis' identity, which now sits "on servers" and is used "to make money hand over fist", and did so "willfully, maliciously and fraudulently". One line takes aim at the future of music:

"The next Elvis will never pick up a guitar."

Suno's "greedy race to the bottom" aims to make human creativity obsolete, the complaint goes on.

The ELVIS Act: a law with a fitting name

What makes the case legally interesting is a Tennessee law that happens to carry Elvis' name: the Ensuring Likeness Voice and Image Security Act, or ELVIS Act. According to Voice Over Herald, Governor Bill Lee signed it on March 21, 2024, at the Nashville honky-tonk Robert's Western World. It passed unanimously and took effect on July 1, 2024. The law adds voice to a 1984 right-of-publicity statute that already protected name, photograph and likeness.

Three things make it stand out:

• Clones count too: A voice is explicitly protected "regardless of whether the sound contains the actual voice or a simulation of the voice", as law firm Manatt quotes the statute.
• Not just advertising: Older laws usually only applied to commercial exploitation, such as an unauthorized ad. That restriction is gone.
• Toolmakers are liable: According to Billboard, the law can also hold companies liable for providing tools for unauthorized use, not just the person who makes the deepfake.

Affected individuals, their estates and other rights holders can sue for damages. Unauthorized use is also a Class A misdemeanor, a lesser criminal offense. According to Manatt, there are exceptions for commentary, criticism, scholarship, satire and parody. And federal copyright law can preempt state laws like this one, which could become important for Suno's defense.

"Suno is the embodiment of why the ELVIS Act was so desperately needed," the complaint says.

The Eminem suit: $41 million

Eight Mile Style's suit is a classic copyright case. Suno allegedly trained its models on the songs and lets users generate songs and lyrics that mimic Eminem's tracks. According to AI Weekly, the publisher is seeking $150,000 per song, the maximum statutory damages for willful copyright infringement in the US. Across roughly 269 works, that comes to about $41 million. The publisher accuses Suno of building its "entire business model on copyright infringement on an unprecedented scale".

Both groups of plaintiffs are represented by the same lawyers: Richard Busch, Mark Block, David Niemierzycki and Andrew Davis. Suno, they write, "mechanically encoded itself with the identities, hard work, creativity and time of artists" and turned it into an "assembly line for cold, hard cash".

Suno's response

Suno hasn't responded in court yet, but told Billboard and Variety:

"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."

The company says it doesn't allow prompts with specific artist names and song titles. Uploaded audio and lyrics are screened for abuse by third-party vendors, and it's continually working to improve its safeguards. ABG spokesperson Lark-Marie Antón countered that the complaint and its evidence "speak for themselves". Elvis' name, image, voice and music, she said, are "among the most valuable intellectual property assets in the world".

Another case hints at how Suno is likely to argue. Americana singer Jason Isbell and other musicians have filed a proposed class action claiming Suno exploits their identities. According to Variety, users were able to get around the artist-name blocks: they asked for an artist's "tone and phrasing", used legal names instead of stage names (for example with the rapper Common), or put spaces between the letters. In that case, Suno said artist names only serve as "shorthand for genre" and that there is "nothing unlawful" about requesting a song in an artist's style.

A growing list of lawsuits

For Suno, this is just one more case. In 2024, all three major labels sued the company over training. Warner Music Group settled last year. Licensing deals with Warner, BMG and Believe fed into the "v6" model, released in September. Universal and Sony then sued again, calling v6 "the fruit of the same poisonous tree", according to Variety. Music publishers Round Hill Music and Reservoir have also sued. According to AI Weekly, Universal settled with rival Udio about a week before the new suits, while Suno hasn't reached a deal with either of the two major labels.

The plaintiffs are going after other AI companies too. In October, ABG and other Presley publishers sued Anthropic, alleging its chatbot Claude was trained on 274 Presley songs and seeking $48.6 million. Anthropic denies it. In June, Eight Mile Style sued Meta for around $110 million, alleging 243 Eminem recordings sat in the music libraries of Facebook, WhatsApp and Instagram without permission. A federal judge in Michigan has allowed that case to proceed to discovery. So far, the lawsuits haven't hurt Suno's valuation: in June the company raised $400 million at a $5.4 billion valuation.

The bigger picture

According to Billboard, the two Elvis suits against Suno and Anthropic together are the most significant legal action against AI on behalf of a single musician so far. Legally, the voice claim is what matters most. Copyright suits over training data are everywhere. But no court has yet decided whether an AI company is liable because its users generate a recognizable voice. If the plaintiffs win, it wouldn't just be stars who benefit: voice actors, dubbing artists and other voice professionals in Tennessee would have a precedent too, as Voice Over Herald points out. If Suno wins, state laws like this would be weaker than their backers promised.

A lot is still open. The court will have to decide whether the ELVIS Act even applies in a California court, whether federal copyright law preempts it, and whether the sample songs prove imitation or just a musical style. For now, every allegation is just that: a claim by the plaintiffs. A ruling is nowhere in sight. But the suits show the music industry is playing on two tracks: some companies are signing licensing deals, while other rights holders are going for maximum legal pressure.