TL;DR: The newest Suno lawsuit is really two. On November 6, 2026, Elvis Presley’s rights holders and Eminem’s publisher, Eight Mile Style, filed separate federal complaints against the AI music generator in the Northern District of California. The Presley case says Suno broke Tennessee’s ELVIS Act by producing Elvis-like vocals and copied 859 compositions to train its models. The Eminem case covers 269 songs. Both are allegations, not rulings. Suno says it blocks prompts that name artists and screens uploads for misuse.
The new Suno lawsuit filings add to a pile of cases against the company. Lawyers for Elvis Presley Enterprises and Eight Mile Style say Suno trained on their songs without permission and lets users make tracks that imitate famous artists. The Presley case is also one of the first big tests of a state law written to stop AI from cloning singers’ voices. Here is what each complaint claims, how Suno responded and what could come next.
What the two Suno lawsuits claim
Both complaints were filed on November 6, 2026 in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, according to the CourtListener docket and a summary of the filings by Copyright Now. Variety reports that the same group of attorneys, including Richard Busch, represents both sets of plaintiffs.
| Elvis Presley case | Eminem (Eight Mile Style) case | |
|---|---|---|
| Case number | 3:26-cv-13398 (N.D. Cal.) | 3:26-cv-13399 (N.D. Cal.) |
| Plaintiffs | Elvis Presley Enterprises, ABG EPE IP, Raleigh Music Publishing and other rights holders | Eight Mile Style LLC and Martin Affiliated LLC |
| Works named | 859 compositions | 269 compositions |
| Counts | 5: ELVIS Act, Tennessee right of publicity, copyright infringement, anti-circumvention, removal of copyright management information | 3: copyright infringement, anti-circumvention, removal of copyright management information |
| Headline money claims | Up to $150,000 per work for willful infringement (about $128.85M across 859 works), plus ELVIS Act damages it believes exceed $50M | About $40.35M in statutory damages at $150,000 per work |
The Elvis Presley complaint
The Presley plaintiffs, a group Variety says includes Authentic Brands Group, accuse Suno of using Presley’s identity whenever users invoke his name to make songs. They argue in a 51-page filing that Suno lets people generate tracks that mirror Presley’s “rich vocal timbre” without permission. According to Copyright Now, the complaint includes recorded examples and says the voices in them are synthetic, not recordings of Presley.
On the training side, the complaint alleges “on information and belief” that Suno got copies of the songs by scraping licensed platforms with automated tools that got around logins, paywalls and anti-bot defenses. It also alleges Suno used the stream-ripping tools youtube-dl and yt-dlp to get past YouTube’s encryption. Suno has not been found liable for any of this. These are the plaintiffs’ claims.
The attorneys did not hold back. “Suno has mechanically encoded itself with artists’ identities, hard-work, creativity, and time, and harnessed them all for a consistent conveyor belt of cold hard cash,” they wrote, as quoted by The Verge. Variety also quotes the line “The next Elvis won’t pick up a guitar.”
The Eminem complaint
Eight Mile Style owns and administers 269 compositions by Marshall Mathers (Eminem), including “Lose Yourself,” “Without Me” and “The Real Slim Shady,” according to Copyright Now’s summary. The complaint alleges Suno copied those works for training, removed copyright management information and produces infringing output, including lyrics. It also cites publicly reported leaked Suno source code that it says contains lyrics and metadata for several of the songs. Variety notes that Eminem himself is not a party to the case.
What is the ELVIS Act?
The Ensuring Likeness Voice and Image Security Act is a Tennessee law passed in 2024. It extends the state’s right-of-publicity protections to a person’s voice, including simulated voices. The Presley complaint relies on three parts of it. It says Suno used Presley’s name and voice to advertise its service, made his voice available to the public without permission, and offered technology whose “primary purpose or function” is producing a particular person’s voice.
That last point matters most for the wider industry. If a court accepts that a general-purpose music generator can count as technology for producing an identifiable singer’s voice, AI audio companies would face a much stricter test in Tennessee. Variety describes the case as a key test of whether estates can use the courts to protect a name, image and likeness from AI use without permission or payment.
Suno’s response
Suno denies wrongdoing. Spokesperson Cat McCormack told The Verge: “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. To protect against this, we do not allow prompts for specific artists’ names and songs and work with third-party providers to screen uploaded audio files and lyrics for potential misuse.”
The statement goes on to say the company is “always working to strengthen our guardrails.” In the earlier case brought by Jason Isbell, Suno said in court that there was “nothing unlawful” about asking for a song in the style of an artist, Variety reports. Those plaintiffs claimed users got around the name filter with prompts about “tone and phrasing,” real names instead of stage names, or spaces between the letters.
How these suits fit into Suno’s legal fight
These are far from Suno’s only legal problems. According to Variety and The Verge, it is already facing:
- Universal Music Group and Sony Music: they sued again over the label-backed v6 model, calling it “the fruit of the same poisoned tree.” We covered that in Universal and Sony Sue Suno Again Over Its v6 Music Model.
- Jason Isbell and other musicians: a September suit seeking class-action status over the use of artists’ identities.
- Reservoir Media and Round Hill Music: publisher claims, both named in the coverage.
Warner Music Group settled with Suno, and deals with WMG, BMG and Believe helped power v6, which launched in September. See our report on Suno’s licensed v6 model. So far the legal fight has not hurt Suno’s valuation. Variety says it raised $400 million in June at a $5.4 billion valuation.
The same plaintiffs are also going after other AI companies. Variety reports that Presley publishers sued Anthropic last month over claims that Claude was trained on 274 Presley songs, seeking $48.6 million. Anthropic denies the claims. Eight Mile Style sued Meta for about $110 million in June over Eminem recordings stored on its platforms, and a Michigan judge let that case move into discovery.
What happens next
- Suno’s formal reply: Suno had not filed a response in either case at the time of writing. Defendants in cases like these often move to dismiss, and the ELVIS Act count could face questions about how a Tennessee law applies to a company the complaint places in Cambridge, Massachusetts, in a case filed in California.
- Training and fair use: the copyright counts will turn on the same question as other AI training cases: whether copying songs to train a model is fair use. The anti-circumvention claims about scraping and stream-ripping could matter even if training is found fair.
- Possible licensing deals: Warner’s settlement shows another path. Labels and publishers have used lawsuits to push AI companies toward licensed models.
For creators who use AI music tools, the practical point is simple. Prompting for a specific artist’s voice or lyrics is exactly what these suits target, and Suno says its own rules ban it. For more on how these systems work, read our explainer on diffusion models in AI.
Sources
- The Verge: Elvis and Eminem rights holders are suing Suno
- Variety: Elvis music owners, Eminem publisher file new lawsuits against Suno
- Copyright Now: Elvis Presley Enterprises v. Suno complaint summary
- Copyright Now: Eight Mile Style v. Suno complaint summary
- CourtListener: Elvis Presley Enterprises, LLC v. Suno, Inc., 3:26-cv-13398
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