Elvis’s owners sue Suno and say typing his name still clones his voice

The company that controls Elvis Presley‘s name and music says Suno, the most popular AI song generator, still lets anyone produce a convincing imitation of his voice. Suno says it blocks prompts that name real artists, but according to the lawsuit, typing the singer’s name into its Create tool is enough to get a synthetic Elvis back.

The case matters to anyone who makes music or listens to it. It is one of the first major tests of Tennessee’s ELVIS Act, a law that lets artists sue the person who makes a voice clone and also the company whose tool made it possible. If that holds up, AI music apps could answer for what their users generate as well as for what they trained on.

The plaintiffs, led by Elvis Presley Enterprises with Raleigh Music Publishing and other rights holders, filed in federal court in Northern California. Elvis Presley Enterprises is the Authentic Brands Group unit that holds the singer’s name, image and likeness and much of his song catalog. The 51-page complaint was written by music litigator Richard Busch of the firm Adams and Reese. It accuses Suno of copying Presley recordings to train its models and of exploiting his identity every time a user invokes him, and it names hits including “Can’t Help Falling in Love,” “Don’t Be Cruel,” “All Shook Up” and “Return to Sender.”

The same lawyers filed a second, separate suit for Eight Mile Style, the publisher that owns much of Eminem’s catalog. That case is about copyright, not voice. Digital Music News reports that it accuses Suno of training on 269 of the publisher’s compositions without permission or payment. One example in the complaint shows Suno producing “Lose Yourself” with the original lyrics word for word. The filing also cites 404 Media’s report that Suno used a piracy service to scrape songs and lyrics from YouTube Music, Deezer and Genius. Eminem himself is not a party.

Suno’s defense rests on its guardrails. A spokesperson told Billboard and The Verge that the company does not allow prompts naming specific artists or songs, and that third-party providers screen uploaded audio and lyrics. “Suno exists to help people create new, original music, not to trade on anyone’s name or likeness,” the statement said. The complaint calls the claim that Suno’s models cannot mimic real voices “unequivocally false” and links videos of Suno output that sounds like Presley. Billboard reports that the filing says Suno produced an Elvis imitation as recently as last month, from lyrics that simply included his name.

That is where the Tennessee law comes in. Older right-of-publicity rules mostly covered commercial uses, such as a fake endorsement in an advert. The ELVIS Act, passed in 2024 in Presley’s adopted home state, drops that limit and adds liability for anyone who supplies a tool built for unauthorized use of a person’s voice or likeness. The complaint leans on that clause directly: “Suno is the embodiment of why the ELVIS Act was so essentially required.”

None of this is proven yet. These are allegations, and Suno has already pushed back on a similar class action led by Americana singer Jason Isbell. There, its lawyers argued that artist names work as “shorthand for the genre they perform in” and that asking for a song in an artist’s style is not unlawful. The ELVIS Act has hardly been tested against a tech company, and a federal judge in California will have to decide how far a Tennessee statute reaches. A win for the Presley side would also leave the training question open, since courts are still deciding it in the label cases. Any ruling would bind Suno’s business in the United States. Artists in Europe, Asia and Latin America depend on their own national laws, which treat voice rights very differently.

The suits add to a long list. All three major labels sued Suno in 2024. Warner Music Group settled last year, and licensing deals with Warner and the publishers BMG and Believe fed the label-backed v6 model Suno released in September. Universal Music Group and Sony Music are still in court and have called v6 “the fruit of the same poisoned tree.” Publishers Round Hill Music and Reservoir have filed their own cases. Investors have shrugged: Suno raised $400 million in June at a $5.4 billion valuation, Variety reports.

Both plaintiffs have other AI fights running. Presley’s rights holders sued Anthropic last month, claiming its chatbot Claude was trained on lyrics to 274 of his songs and seeking $48.6 million. Anthropic denies the allegations. Eight Mile Style is suing Meta for about $110 million over Eminem recordings stored in the music libraries of Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp, and in June a federal judge in Michigan allowed that case to move into discovery.

Both Suno suits were filed on Friday, November 6, in the US District Court for the Northern District of California. Suno’s formal response in court comes next.

One line from the Presley complaint gets at what the music industry is afraid of: “The next Elvis won’t pick up a guitar.” What Suno answers will show whether a law written with deepfakes in mind can reach the app that makes them.

Tags: Folarin Balogun, Baker Mayfield, Elvis Presley, AI music, Authentic Brands Group, Eminem, Suno