Elvis and Eminem rights holders sue Suno over AI voice cloning

What happened

Suno, the AI music generation company, is facing two more lawsuits. According to The Verge, the new cases were brought by a group of rights holders for Elvis Presley's music and by the publisher behind some of Eminem's biggest records. Both allege that Suno illegally generates music and lyrics that mimic those artists.

The claims

The Presley suit rests on Tennessee's Ensuring Likeness Voice and Image Security (ELVIS) Act, a state law that makes it illegal for an AI company to clone a singer's voice. The Verge reports that lawyers for the Presley rights holders argue that 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."

Elsewhere in the complaint, the lawyers write that 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."

The new suits closely mirror a case filed by songwriter Jason Isbell and others in September, which claimed Suno created imitations of the plaintiffs but, notably, did not directly claim copyright infringement. That distinction is significant: likeness and voice-cloning claims offer a different legal avenue from the copyright arguments that record labels have pursued against generative AI companies.

Suno's response

Suno spokesperson Cat McCormack told The Verge that the company "exists to help people create new, original music, not to trade on anyone's name or likeness," and that it prohibits unauthorized use of an artist's work.

According to McCormack, Suno does not allow prompts referencing specific artists' names or songs, and works with third-party providers to screen uploaded audio files and lyrics for potential misuse. The spokesperson added that the company is always working to strengthen its guardrails and will continue adding new safeguards for artists and users.

A growing stack of litigation

These are far from the first legal challenges for the company. As The Verge notes, Suno is already being sued by Sony, Universal Music Group, Jason Isbell, Reservoir Media and others. The new complaints add a second wave of pressure built around likeness and voice rights rather than traditional copyright claims.

Why it matters

The lawsuits are an early test of whether right-of-publicity laws such as the ELVIS Act can effectively reach generative music tools. If courts accept that an AI service can violate a voice-cloning statute through its outputs, artists gain a legal theory that sidesteps the harder copyright questions around training data, where AI companies often argue fair use.

The outcome also puts Suno's guardrails under scrutiny. Blocking artist-name prompts and screening uploads is a mitigation, but the plaintiffs argue the underlying system still reproduces artists' styles and identities. If the courts side with the rights holders, AI music companies could be forced to change how they train models and constrain what their tools can generate, with consequences that would reach well beyond Suno.