Elvis and Eminem rights holders sue Suno over AI voice and music imitation

Elvis Presley Enterprises and affiliated rights holders sued Suno in the Northern District of California on Nov. 6, 2026, over AI-generated music imitating Presley’s voice and likeness.

Eight Mile Style, which controls or administers hundreds of Eminem recordings, filed a separate federal suit against Suno the same day in San Francisco. Eight Mile Style controls 269 Eminem works, including The Real Slim Shady, Lose Yourself and Stan. The publisher seeks $41 million in damages: $150K per composition and $672K over alleged removal of copyright information. Eminem is not a plaintiff, and plaintiffs describe the damages total as what they are seeking rather than a guaranteed court award.

Richard Busch serves as lead counsel for the Presley plaintiffs and filed both lawsuits against Suno. Busch previously represented Marvin Gaye’s estate in the Blurred Lines copyright case.

The Presley complaint runs 51 pages and says Suno used 859 compositions by Presley to build its AI model. It lists A Little Less Conversation and Return to Sender among the songs at issue and includes examples of AI-generated tracks that allegedly resemble Presley’s voice. The filing accuses Suno of ELVIS Act violations for letting users create tracks mirroring Presley’s voice without permission, says Suno’s statement that it blocks artists’ names is false, and demands a jury trial.

Busch called the outputs unlicensed and synthetic, built on Presley’s voice and image, and said hundreds to thousands more exist.

Suno says it blocks prompts for specific artists’ names and songs and uses outside vendors to screen audio and lyrics that users upload. The company told Billboard that it exists to help people create original music and prohibits unauthorized use of an artist’s work.

Suno’s reply to the Presley suit did not engage the specific allegations in detail and reused wording from earlier cases, and Suno had not yet responded to the Presley case in court as of Nov. 7. Jason Isbell and other musicians have sued Suno, too, claiming violations of publicity rights and seeking class-action status; in that case, Suno told the court it sees nothing unlawful in requesting a song styled after an artist.

The Presley plaintiff group includes Authentic Brands Group, which controls Presley’s intellectual property, along with Raleigh Music Publishing and others. The company’s spokesperson called Presley’s name, image, likeness and music some of the most valuable intellectual property there is.

The Anthropic case from Presley rights holders was filed in the Northern District of California in October 2026 over 274 Presley compositions that trained Claude without a license. They sought up to $41.1 million in statutory damages tied to 274 allegedly willfully infringed works. Another section of the Anthropic complaint puts the total demand at about $48.6 million, apart from the $41.1 million figure. Among the allegedly infringed Presley hits named in the complaint are All Shook Up, Can’t Help Falling in Love and Return to Sender.

The complaint says Anthropic’s Claude models infringed Presley works throughout their development and says infringement continues through user outputs that reproduce copyrighted lyrics. It also says Claude still infringes in its latest version despite supposedly added guardrails, and it says Claude re-created particular songs aimed at a modern audience.

The rights holders seek up to $150,000 per work in statutory damages on the 274 works and demand a permanent injunction against Anthropic plus destruction of the unauthorized copies. The filing lists direct copyright infringement and circumvention of protection measures among its claims. It also names removal or alteration involving copyright management information.

The filing describes Anthropic’s business model as resting on copyright infringement through mass scraping of internet content, along with pirated books.

Anthropic previously settled an authors’ copyright lawsuit over pirated books used in AI model training for $1.5 billion. In January, Universal Music, Concord Music Group and ABKCO widened their Anthropic lawsuit over allegedly infringed song lyrics, and BMG Rights Management, Sony Music Publishing and Warner Chappell Music also filed similar lawsuits against Anthropic.

Other Suno lawsuits name Universal Music Group, Sony Music Entertainment, Round Hill Music and Reservoir Media, while Warner Music Group settled with Suno. Reservoir Media went to federal court against both Suno and Anthropic on Oct. 21, 2026.

Billboard has described the wider fight as a surge of cases from authors and visual artists, along with movie studios and record labels. The Presley complaint says AI companies turn artists’ identities and creative work into commercial products without permission.