Elvis Estate and Eminem Publisher Sue Suno in Escalating AI Music Copyright War

On Friday, November 6, two separate federal lawsuits landed against AI music generator Suno in the Northern District of California — one from the rights holders of Elvis Presley's catalog, the other from Eminem's longtime publisher. Both filings come from the same legal team at Adams & Reese, signaling a coordinated push from music's most valuable catalogs to challenge AI‑generated music at its legal foundations.

According to Variety, the Presley lawsuit was brought by Authentic Brands Group, Raleigh Music Publishing, and Elvis Presley Enterprises in a 51‑page filing that accuses Suno of copyright infringement and violating Tennessee's 2024 ELVIS Act by allowing users to generate tracks that mirror Presley's "rich vocal timbre" without permission. The separate suit from Eight Mile Style — the Ferndale, Michigan‑based publisher that controls nearly 270 Eminem compositions including "Lose Yourself," "Without Me," and "The Real Slim Shady" — seeks more than $41 million in damages, the Detroit Free Press reported. Eminem himself is not personally participating in the suit.

The Presley lawsuit represents one of the first major cases brought under Tennessee's Ensuring Likeness Voice and Image Security Act, the 2024 law specifically designed to prevent AI companies from cloning singers' voices. Unlike traditional right‑of‑publicity laws that require commercial exploitation — think advertisements or merchandise — the ELVIS Act removes that requirement entirely and imposes liability on the companies that provide the cloning tools, not just the end users.

"Suno is the embodiment of why the ELVIS Act was so essentially required," the complaint states, as reported by Billboard. The filing lists specific Presley songs allegedly infringed, including "Can't Help Falling in Love," "Don't Be Cruel," "All Shook Up," and "(You're the) Devil in Disguise." As recently as last month, Billboard noted, Suno generated an Elvis voice clone based simply on lyrics that included his name — despite the company's stated guardrails.

The complaints pull no punches. "The next Elvis won't pick up a guitar. 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," reads the Presley filing, quoted by.¹ The complaint continues: "All of the humanity, history, despair, and triumph that constitutes Elvis' identity was stolen and is stored on servers and used by Suno to make massive amounts of money."

Eight Mile Style's 32‑page complaint takes a similarly sharp tone. According to the Detroit Free Press, the publisher argues Suno "has built their entire business model based on copyright infringement at a scale heretofore unseen." The suit cites Suno's own court disclosure, reported by the Detroit Free Press, that its AI model was trained on “essentially all music files of reasonable quality that are accessible on the open Internet” and references leaked source code that reportedly shows scraping from YouTube and Genius.com.

A Suno spokesperson gave the same statement to multiple outlets: "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 blocks prompts for specific artist names and songs, and works with third‑party providers to screen uploaded audio files and lyrics for potential misuse.

However, the Detroit Free Press reports that Eight Mile Style's suit demonstrates how these guardrails are easily bypassed: users can prompt Suno to generate a "Slim Shady"-style track using descriptive strings like "aggressive rap, rapid‑fire flow, dark humor, male rapper, horrorcore" without ever typing the artist's name. Variety notes that the Jason Isbell class action against Suno made similar claims — that the platform allows exploitation of identities even when artist names aren't directly prompted, through tactics like adding spaces between letters or referencing "tone and phrasing."

These lawsuits don't exist in isolation. Suno is already facing litigation from Universal Music Group and Sony Music Entertainment — who filed an expanded suit calling Suno's label‑backed v6 model "the fruit of the same poisoned tree," per.³ Independent publisher Round Hill Music sued for $1 billion, while Reservoir Media is pursuing nearly $340 million in claims over songs by Madonna, Johnny Cash, and Joni Mitchell.

The legal landscape is fragmented. Warner Music Group settled its case against Suno and entered a partnership to launch licensed AI music models — giving artists opt‑in control over whether their voices and likenesses can be used. But Sony and UMG remain in active litigation, and the American Federation of Musicians has filed its own suit arguing that labels violated collective bargaining agreements by licensing recordings for AI training without required notice or compensation.

The Elvis and Eminem rights holders aren't new to AI litigation. Just last month, Authentic Brands Group sued Anthropic for allegedly training its Claude chatbot on 274 Elvis songs, seeking $48.6 million in damages, Variety reported. And in June, Eight Mile Style sued Meta for approximately $110 million over claims that 243 Eminem recordings were improperly stored and used across Facebook, WhatsApp, and Instagram — a case where a Michigan judge recently allowed discovery to proceed.

"The name, image, likeness, and music of Elvis Presley are among the most valuable intellectual property assets in the world. We protect those rights vigorously," an Authentic Brands Group spokesperson told.² The coordinated strategy — suing both the AI platforms that generate music (Suno) and the companies building foundational models (Anthropic, Meta) — suggests rights holders are testing every legal avenue available.

For developers and companies building AI tools, these cases raise foundational questions about training data liability. Suno's defense has relied on fair use arguments — that training on publicly available data is transformative and legal. But the ELVIS Act introduces a different vector: liability for the tool provider, not just the user who generates infringing content. If courts accept that argument, any AI platform that enables voice or likeness cloning — even unintentionally — could face statutory damages.

Despite the legal headwinds, Suno's business continues to attract capital. The company raised $400 million in a June funding round at a $5.4 billion valuation, Variety noted, and its v6 model launched in partnership with Warner Music Group, BMG, and Believe. The disconnect between legal risk and market valuation suggests investors are betting that licensing deals — not courtroom victories — will ultimately resolve the AI music copyright question. Whether that bet pays off may depend on how these Elvis and Eminem cases unfold.