The rights holders for Elvis Presley and the publisher behind Eminem’s songs have sued AI music generator Suno in two separate federal lawsuits, in one of the biggest legal tests yet of whether AI companies can clone a singer’s voice. The twin complaints were filed on Friday, 6 November, in the US District Court for the Northern District of California, and they accuse Suno of training its models on their songs without permission.
The Presley case, a 51-page complaint, was brought by Elvis Presley Enterprises, Authentic Brands Group, Raleigh Music Publishing and other rights holders. It alleges that Suno copied 859 Presley compositions to train its system and lets users generate tracks that imitate the singer’s voice. The complaint invokes Tennessee’s ELVIS Act, the 2024 law designed to stop AI companies from cloning singers’ voices, alongside claims of copyright infringement, circumvention of technological protections and removal of copyright information.
Two lawsuits, two sets of rights
The second complaint was filed by Eight Mile Style and Martin Affiliated, the companies that own or administer rights in 269 musical compositions associated with Eminem, including “Lose Yourself”, “Without Me” and “The Real Slim Shady”. It seeks up to $40.35 million in statutory copyright damages if the court awards the maximum for wilful infringement. Eminem himself is not a plaintiff in the case.
The Presley plaintiffs calculate a maximum of $128.85 million in copyright statutory damages for the 859 allegedly wilfully infringed works, plus further sums under the anti-circumvention and copyright-management provisions, and seek more than $50 million under the ELVIS Act, trebled. These are sums sought by the plaintiffs, not money awarded by a court, and no judge has ruled on any of the claims.
A widening war over AI music
Suno denies wrongdoing, saying it blocks prompts that name artists and screens uploads for misuse, and it had not filed a formal response in either case at the time of reporting. The lawsuits add to a pile of cases against the company: Warner Music Group settled with Suno in 2025, while Universal Music Group and Sony Music are still pursuing claims.
The Presley case is particularly significant because it attempts to establish that an AI company can infringe two fundamentally different kinds of rights at once: rights in copyrighted musical compositions and rights associated with a performer’s identity. The same legal team filed both complaints, signalling a coordinated push from some of music’s most valuable catalogues. Both cases will take a long time to resolve, but they already mark a major escalation in the legal confrontation between the music industry and generative AI.
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