Two Major Music Estates Sue Suno Over $500 Million in AI Claims
Rightsholders for Elvis Presley and Eminem filed separate federal complaints alleging the AI company cloned their voices and lyrics for commercial gain.
By Nikolai Patterson ·
Elvis Presley rightsholders and the publisher of Eminem’s catalog filed separate federal lawsuits against the AI music generator Suno on Friday. The two complaints, lodged in the Northern District of California, add new legal pressure to the San Francisco-based company as it faces multiple copyright challenges. Each case targets specific aspects of how Suno’s platform generates new audio tracks using existing musical styles and identities.
The Presley lawsuit was brought by a group including Authentic Brands Group and Raleigh Music Publishing. The 51-page filing accuses Suno of copyright infringement and violating Tennessee’s ELVIS Act, a 2024 law designed to protect artists’ likenesses from AI cloning. The plaintiffs argue that users can generate tracks that mimic Presley’s vocal timbre without permission simply by typing his name into the prompt field. They claim this practice exploits his identity for commercial gain.
In a parallel case, Eight Mile Style, the LLC that controls recordings such as “Lose Yourself” and “The Real Slim Shady,” alleged that Suno infringed its copyright. The complaint states that the platform allowed users to generate songs and lyrics that closely mirror Eminem’s work. Eminem is not a named party in this suit, and his representative did not respond to a request for comment.
Attorneys Richard Busch, Mark Block, David Niemierzycki, and Andrew Davis represent both groups. They wrote that Suno has mechanically encoded itself with artists’ identities and creativity to produce a consistent flow of revenue. In the Presley filing, the lawyers argued that the company’s strategy aims to make human creativity obsolete. They noted that future generations may question the point of pursuing music if AI can replicate it in seconds.
These legal actions follow similar suits filed by other musicians and publishers. A class-action lawsuit led by Jason Isbell alleges that Suno allows users to bypass restrictions by using specific prompts that reference an artist’s tone or phrasing rather than their name. Suno has denied those allegations, stating in court that there was nothing unlawful about requesting a song in the vein of a specific artist. The new Presley and Eminem cases add detailed examples of generated tracks to the ongoing dispute.
The complaints also mirror recent litigation against other tech giants. Last month, the Presley group sued Anthropic, claiming its chatbot Claude was trained on 274 Presley songs and demanding $48.6 million in damages. In June, Eight Mile Style sued Meta for $110 million, alleging it stored 243 Eminem recordings across its social media platforms without permission. A federal judge in Michigan allowed the Meta case to proceed to discovery.
Suno has not responded to requests for comment regarding the new filings. The company recently raised $400 million in a funding round at a $5.4 billion valuation. It continues to operate its label-backed model v6, which launched in September after deals with Warner Music Group, BMG, and Believe. Those deals did not stop Universal Music Group and Sony Music Entertainment from filing a separate suit over the new model.
The Presley and Eminem cases are set for initial court proceedings in the coming months. The plaintiffs seek to recover the value of the misappropriated identities and to stop their ongoing commercial exploitation. Suno faces a growing stack of litigation that includes major labels and independent publishers, all testing the boundaries of AI music generation rights.
