AI music generator Suno faces two more copyright lawsuits, and one of them tests a law named after the plaintiff.
The lawsuits are from a group of Elvis Presley’s music rights holders and Eight Mile Style, the independent music publisher behind many of Eminem’s early hits. The Presley.plaintiffs claim the Massachusetts-based AI company stole “Elvis’ likeness and copyrights,” while Eight Mile Style says Suno disregarded “the rights of Eight Mile Style” by making unlicensed copies of its songs.
Both federal lawsuits were filed in the Northern District of California on Friday and include several examples of AI songs that allegedly mimic Presley’s sound or replicate Eminem’s lyricism. The same legal team, led by attorney Richard Busch, represents both plaintiffs.
The Presley lawsuit, from a group of rights holders including Elvis Presley Enterprises, Authentic Brands Group and Raleigh Music Publishing, is one of the first major tests of Tennessee’s Ensuring Likeness, Voice and Image Security law, also known as the ELVIS Act. The law, which went into effect in 2024, protects artists from unauthorized commercial use of their voice, image and likeness, specifically targeting AI voice cloning. The 51-page complaint claims Suno violated the law by letting users generate tracks that imitate Presley’s voice. Damages for this case could exceed $50 million, according to the lawsuit.
“All of the humanity, history, despair, and triumph that constitutes Elvis’ identity was stolen and is stored on servers and harnessed by Suno to make massive amounts of money,” the Presley complaint said.
“The next Elvis won’t pick up a guitar. Suno’s ravenous race to the bottom aims to make human creativity obsolete,” it added.
Eight Mile Style accuses the AI company of similar infringing activity. The Michigan-based music publisher controls 269 compositions, includes Eminem hits like “Lose Yourself,” “The Real Slim Shady” and “Stan.” Eminem is not a party to the suit. The complaint alleges that Suno built its “entire business model based on copyright infringement at a scale heretofore unseen.” Eight Mile Style “never authorized Suno to copy, reproduce, or otherwise use” its copyrighted material, yet the company “trained its AI model” on Eight Mile’s music, according to the lawsuit. The publisher is seeking about $41 million in damages.
“Suno’s business model was admittedly and clearly: infringe now, make billions by being the first mover, and try to settle on the cheap later,” the complaint states. “Seeking forgiveness is clearly more profitable than permission, which they obviously could have done but consciously chose not to do.”
Suno denies the new allegations from Presley’s rights holders and Eight Mile Style. A spokesperson for the company said it does not “allow prompts for specific artists’ names and songs” and works “with third-party providers to screen uploaded audio files and lyrics for potential misuse.”
The lawsuits argue those guardrails are easy to get around. Eight Mile Style’s complaint says users can prompt a Slim Shady-style track with descriptions like “aggressive rap, rapid-fire flow, dark humor, male rapper, horrorcore” without ever typing Eminem’s name.
“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,” a spokesperson at Suno said in a statement.
The cases are the latest legal actions taken against Suno. Ongoing litigation includes lawsuits from independent music publishers Round Hill Music and Reservoir and major labels Universal Music Group and Sony Music Entertainment — all anchored around copyright. Warner Music Group settled its case against Suno last year and signed a licensing deal with the company.
Suno has since inked deals with WMG, BMG and Believe, which helped create Suno’s first label-backed model, released in September. The new model prompted yet another lawsuit from UMG and Sony, alleging the latest model still infringes on their copyrighted works.
The AI company’s market value hasn’t been harmed by its legal troubles, as it raised $400 million during a funding round in June and is valued at $5.4 billion, though most of the lawsuits against it were filed after that round.
Several of Presley’s rights holders and Eight Mile Style also recently sued other artificial intelligence giants.
Authentic Brands Group and other Presley publishers filed a federal lawsuit against Anthropic last month, claiming it used his songs without permission to train its online agent Claude. The San Francisco-based AI company disputes the allegations.
Eight Mile Style sued Meta in May 2025, claiming it infringed on its Eminem copyrights across its Facebook, WhatsApp and Instagram libraries. A federal judge in Michigan recently ruled the case could proceed to discovery.
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Disclaimer : This story is auto aggregated by a computer programme and has not been created or edited by DOWNTHENEWS. Publisher: latimes.com
