Elvis Estate, Eminem Publisher File Lawsuits Against AI Startup Suno

A collection of Elvis Presley music rightsholders and the publisher of many of Eminem‘s records have filed sprawling new federal lawsuits against the AI music generator Suno, with each party making separate allegations that add to the AI company’s legal challenges.

The Presley lawsuit — brought by a group that includes Authentic Brands Group, Raleigh Music Publishing and others against the AI music generator in the Northern District of California — accuses the platform of copyright infringement and exploiting Presley’s identity whenever Suno users cite his name when they generate new songs. They claimed in a 51-page filing that Suno violated Tennessee’s Ensuring Likeness Voice and Image Security — or, ELVIS — Act, a 2024 law that prevents AI companies from cloning singers’ voice, by allowing users to generate tracks that mirror Presley’s “rich vocal timbre” without permission.

Eight Mile Style, an LLC that controls hundreds of Eminem recordings, including “Lose Yourself,” “Without Me” and “The Real Slim Shady,” alleged in its own case that Suno infringed upon its copyright by allowing users to generate songs and lyrics that mirror the rapper’s tracks. Eminem is not individually participating in the suit, and a representative for the rapper did not respond to an immediate request for comment.

Attorneys Richard Busch, Mark Block, David Niemierzycki and Andrew Davis — who are representing both the Presley group and Eight Mile Style — argued 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.” Both complaints included several examples of generated songs that either allegedly sounded like Presley or produced lyrics replicating Eminem’s work.

“The next Elvis won’t pick up a guitar,” the attorneys wrote in the Presley case. “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, begging the question from future generations who would attempt to start what is already an arduous, uncertain, and not always lucrative creative pursuit: ‘What’s the point?’”

Elements of the Presley lawsuit mirror one brought by Americana singer Jason Isbell and other musicians, who alleged in a filing seeking class-action status that Suno’s platform allows users to exploit their identities. Suno has denied those allegations.

Suno did not respond to an immediate request for comment.

The Presley case is the latest test of whether an artist or their estate can employ the legal system to protect their name, image and likeness from use by an AI company without explicit authorization or compensation, a fear induced by AI models and deepfakes since generative technology took hold of the public sphere. In the Isbell-led suit, the plaintiffs argued that Suno’s platform allowed users to bypass its restrictions by using specific prompts that, instead of using an artist’s name, asked for tracks that invoked their “tone and phrasing” by using real names instead of stage names (as in the case of the rapper Common) or by adding spaces between the letters of their names, among other methods.

“This lawsuit seeks to recover the value of those misappropriated identities and to stop their ongoing commercial exploitation,” attorney Alan D. Rose wrote in that lawsuit. Suno denied the allegations and said in court there was “nothing unlawful” about asking for a song in the vein of an artist.

The cases follow similar ones filed by both parties against Anthropic and Meta, respectively. Authentic Brands Group joined other Presley publishers last month in a federal lawsuit against Anthropic, claiming its AI chatbot Claude was improperly trained on 274 of Presley’s songs, including iconic tracks such as “Can’t Help Falling in Love with You,” “Run On” and “Farther Along.” The group demanded a total of $48.6 million in damages for the use of the songs and for Anthropic to cease infringing the rights holders’ copyright. Anthropic has denied the allegations.

Eight Mile Style also sued Meta for roughly $110 million in June, claiming it infringed its copyright by storing 243 of the Grammy-winning rapper’s Eight Mile-owned recordings across its Facebook, WhatsApp and Instagram libraries without permission. Meta attorneys called the suit “fanciful” in court in June, but a federal judge in Michigan ruled the case could move into discovery.

The cases add to the ongoing lawsuits against Suno, including those from the independent music publisher Round Hill Music and major labels Universal Music Group and Sony Music Entertainment. Warner Music Group settled its case against Suno last year. Deals with WMG and the music publishers BMG and Believe helped power Suno’s label-backed model “v6,” which came out in September. But that model prompted another lawsuit by UMG and Sony Music, with the two labels calling it “the fruit of the same poisoned tree.

The lawsuits haven’t impacted Suno’s market value. It raised $400 million during a funding round in June at a $5.4 billion valuation.