Elvis Presley's Rightsholders and Eight Mile Style Sue AI Music Firm Suno
Owners of Elvis Presley's likeness and of the publishing rights to many of his songs have sued Suno, the AI music generator that makes complete songs from text prompts. The complaint was filed on November 6 in the US District Court for the Northern District of California, a federal court in California, and was reported by Music Business Worldwide.
The plaintiffs include Elvis Presley Enterprises and ABG EPE IP, both controlled by Authentic Brands Group, along with Raleigh Music Publishing, Abilene Music, several trusts and individual rightsholders. They allege that Suno trained its AI on Presley's recordings and lets users generate new songs in a voice that listeners would recognise as his.
The money claims are large, and they are built up piece by piece. The plaintiffs seek statutory damages, which are fixed sums that US copyright law allows per work without requiring proof of exact losses. For 859 compositions, they put that figure at $128.85 million. That works out to $150,000 per song, the legal maximum, which they say applies because the infringement was willful, meaning deliberate.
Two further claims sit on top of that. The plaintiffs seek $21.475 million for allegedly stripping songwriter and publisher credits from the output, and $2,147,500 for allegedly bypassing access controls, the digital locks that guard protected material. Elvis Presley Enterprises separately seeks damages believed to exceed $50 million over the alleged use of Presley's voice and likeness. That claim is pleaded twice, under two separate Tennessee claims. Counted once, the figures across all the Presley claims total just over $202 million, before any tripling or punitive damages, the extra penalties a court can add to punish conduct.
The Presley suit leans in part on the ELVIS Act, a Tennessee law whose name stands for Ensuring Likeness, Voice, and Image Security. The complaint also points to specific examples. It cites at least 17 Suno outputs that allegedly reproduce songs the plaintiffs control, including "Can't Help Falling in Love" and "Let's Twist Again." Elvis Presley Enterprises says it found at least 38 Suno outputs that use Presley's voice or likeness.
A second case was filed the same day. Eight Mile Style, which co-publishes hundreds of Eminem songs, sued Suno over 269 compositions. Its complaint pleads figures totalling just over $47.7 million.
What this means in practice is still in the courts' hands. Every figure above is a sum the plaintiffs are asking for, and no court has ruled on any of them. The cases turn on whether a song generated in a familiar voice, or built from a catalogue of existing recordings, counts as copying the songs and the singer. For the writers, publishers and performers who hold those rights, the question is also who gets paid when a machine learns from their work.
Both complaints were filed on November 6, and both name Suno as the defendant.
