Elvis Presley Enterprises Sues Suno Over AI Copy of His Voice
Elvis Presley Enterprises has sued the AI music company Suno, accusing it of cloning Elvis Presley's voice. The complaint was filed on Friday, 6 November, and Billboard reported it on Saturday.
Elvis Presley Enterprises is a unit of Authentic Brands Group, which controls much of Presley's song catalogue. It also holds rights to his name, image and likeness. The lawsuit says Suno stole his voice and let users clone it. That, the company argues, violates his likeness rights, the legal control a person or their estate has over how their identity is used commercially. The suit also accuses Suno of copyright infringement, which means using protected recordings or songs without permission.
The complaint was filed by Richard Busch, a litigator at the firm Adams & Reese. Billboard describes it as one of the first major cases brought under Tennessee's ELVIS Act, a state law covering AI-generated copies of a person's voice and image.
The Suno case is not the company's first AI lawsuit. Weeks earlier, Elvis Presley Enterprises sued Anthropic over the alleged training of its Claude chatbot on Elvis songs. Training means feeding recordings into software so it learns to produce similar material. Billboard reports that the Anthropic case came before the Suno filing.
Elvis Presley catalogue owners also filed a $41 million copyright lawsuit against Anthropic. The New York Times reported that the case alleges Anthropic used Presley's music to train its AI models without permission.
Other music rights holders have brought similar cases. Round Hill Music filed copyright infringement lawsuits against both Suno and Anthropic in August. Business Wire, the company's distribution wire, said the suits allege the defendants used musical works without authorisation, licence or compensation. Billboard also reports that Reservoir filed separate suits against both companies, alleging they trained AI models on works including songs by Madonna and Johnny Cash.
For a general reader, the core question in each case is simple. Who owns the sound of a song, and who owns the sound of a singer? Those questions are now being argued in court, one filing at a time.
