Elvis Rights Holders Sue Suno Under a Law Named for the King as Eminem Publisher Piles On

Tennessee named its AI voice cloning law after Elvis Presley. Now his rights holders are using it against an AI company. On November 6, a group of Presley rights holders sued AI music generator Suno in federal court in the Northern District of California, claiming it lets users conjure the King without a license. The same day, Eight Mile Style, the publisher behind many of Eminem's biggest songs, filed its own suit against Suno in the same court.

These are two separate cases with different legal hooks, and Eminem himself is not a plaintiff. Variety reported that the rapper is not individually participating, and that his representative did not respond to a request for comment.

The Presley suit is the sharper one. According to the 51-page complaint, brought by Elvis Presley Enterprises, Raleigh Music Publishing and a list of trusts and individual song owners, Suno violated the ELVIS Act, the 2024 Tennessee law that targets AI cloning of a singer's voice. The filing describes Presley's "distinctively rich vocal timbre" as his signature and argues Suno copied it. It even notes that Tennessee asked the Elvis rights holders for permission before naming the statute, "something Defendant Suno, Inc. does not know how to do."

"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." Attorneys for the Presley rights holders

The most pointed allegation concerns a song nobody asked to sound like Elvis. The complaint says that on October 7, 2026, Suno generated two outputs titled "He Is Still The King," each featuring what the plaintiffs call Presley's "unmistakable and iconic voice" over a rockabilly track, pulled from lyrics alone. The lawyers set that against Suno's own statement in an earlier case that it "does not permit the use of the artist name to directly instruct the model." The filing also claims Suno's "For You" recommendations served up Elvis soundalikes, and that its guardrails fold under a simple misspelling, accepting "in the style of Reba McIntyre" when the real name is blocked.

The money is big on paper. Elvis Presley Enterprises says its ELVIS Act damages are "believed to exceed $50 million," and it argues for treble damages because Presley served in the US Army from about 1958 to 1960. On the copyright side, the plaintiffs list 859 works, including Raleigh's catalog with Chubby Checker's "Let's Twist Again," and total their statutory claim at $128,850,000.

Eight Mile Style keeps it simpler: copyright. According to a summary of the filing by legal site Copyright Now, the 36-page complaint covers 269 Eminem compositions, including "Lose Yourself," "Without Me," "The Real Slim Shady" and "Stan," and alleges Suno outputs reuse their lyrics, often verbatim. It seeks $40,350,000 in statutory damages and adds claims that Suno scraped licensed platforms by getting around their access controls.

Suno denies wrongdoing. Spokesperson Cat McCormack gave The Verge this statement.

"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." Cat McCormack, Suno spokesperson

The pile keeps growing. Suno already faces suits from Sony, Universal Music Group, Jason Isbell, Reservoir Media and others, according to The Verge, while Warner Music Group settled and licensed last year, Variety reported. Investors seem unbothered, with Suno raising $400 million at a $5.4 billion valuation in June, per Variety. And this is the second AI company the Presley owners have targeted in weeks, after they sued Anthropic over 274 songs they say Claude took.

Every claim here is an allegation, and Suno has argued in the Isbell case that there is "nothing unlawful" about asking for a song in the vein of an artist, Variety reported. But the ELVIS Act was written for exactly this fight. If a court lets the King's own law bite, every AI music company that promises guardrails will have to prove they actually hold.