Suno sued by Elvis Presley's and Eminem's rights holders
On November 6, 2026, Elvis Presley's rights owners and Eminem's publisher sued Suno. What they allege, what Suno says, and what it changes if you make music with AI.
Frank HoubreFounder of Imaginode
5 min read
Two lawsuits against Suno on the same day
On Friday, November 6, 2026, Elvis Presley's rights owners and Eight Mile Style, the publisher behind much of Eminem's catalog, each sued Suno, the AI music generator.
Both complaints were filed by the same lawyer, Richard Busch of Adams & Reese, in federal court in California, according to Billboard. They accuse Suno of training its models on protected songs without permission, and of letting users produce tracks that imitate these artists.
On the Elvis side, the plaintiff is Elvis Presley Enterprises, a unit of Authentic Brands Group that manages the singer's rights, name, image and much of his catalog. It's the second such case in a few weeks: the same group sued Anthropic in October over training Claude on 274 Elvis songs.
On the Eminem side, Eight Mile Style is the plaintiff, not the rapper himself. The complaint names "Lose Yourself", "Without Me", "Till I Collapse", "The Real Slim Shady" and "Stan", among others.
What Elvis's rights owners allege: the voice
The Elvis complaint goes beyond model training. It accuses Suno of enabling clones of the singer's voice, and relies on a Tennessee law to do so.
The law is the ELVIS Act (Ensuring Likeness Voice and Image Security), passed in 2024 in the state Elvis called home. According to Billboard, it removes the need to prove commercial use of a person's voice or image, and it makes companies that provide the tools for such use liable. This is one of the first major cases to test it.
Suno has said elsewhere that you can't name an artist in a prompt. The complaint calls that "unequivocally false": it links to videos of tracks that sound strikingly like Elvis, and says that as recently as last month, Suno produced an Elvis clone from lyrics that simply included his name.
The rights owners also have a line that sums up their position, quoted by Billboard and Vice: "The next Elvis won't pick up a guitar."
Eminem: about $41 million sought
Eight Mile Style's complaint is about copyright, with a precise figure.
According to AllHipHop, which reports on the complaint, Eight Mile Style controls the rights to 269 Eminem compositions and seeks $150,000 per work, or $40.35 million, plus $672,000 over the alleged removal of copyright information. About $41 million in total. That's what the plaintiff is asking for, not what a court has awarded.
Eight Mile Style has already sued Meta on similar grounds. The two cases against Suno add to ongoing litigation: the three major labels sued Suno in 2024, Warner has since settled, but Universal and Sony are still in court, according to Billboard. Publishers Round Hill and Reservoir have also sued, as has a group of artists led by Jason Isbell.
The two lawsuits against Suno as of November 8, 2026
| Point | Elvis Presley | Eminem |
|---|---|---|
| Plaintiff | Elvis Presley Enterprises (Authentic Brands Group) | Eight Mile Style, publisher |
| Allegation | Training on his songs and cloning his voice | Training on his songs and imitating his style |
| Legal basis cited | Copyright and Tennessee's ELVIS Act | Copyright |
| Amount | Not stated in the articles we read | About $41M sought (269 works) |
| Is the artist a plaintiff? | His rights owners | No, Eminem is not a party |
What Suno says
Suno denies trading on anyone's name or likeness, and points to its guardrails.
The statement sent to Billboard: "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." Suno adds that it blocks prompts naming specific artists or songs, has third-party providers screen uploaded audio and lyrics, and will keep adding safeguards.
In the Isbell case, Suno's lawyers also argued that an artist's name works as "shorthand" for a genre, not a way to steal a voice. Nothing has been decided: these are allegations the court will examine.
What it changes if you make music with AI
The lawsuits target Suno, not its users. But they draw the red line clearly: the voice and recognizable style of a real artist.
If you make a song for a video, a podcast or an ad, never put an artist's name in the prompt or the lyrics, even to describe a style. Describe what you want to hear instead: tempo, instruments, mood, type of voice. It's more precise, and it keeps you safe.
Keep a record of your prompts and generations. If a track sounds too much like someone, you can show how it was made. For commercial use, the question is the same as for images: our guide to AI image rights for commercial use gives the method.
And look at who pays the artists. The ElevenMusic and SoundCloud partnership shows the other route: models trained under agreements, with artists paid. Licensing is what will decide which AI music tools you can use safely two years from now.
What I would do this week
Reread your music prompts, clean up any that name an artist, and note where each track you publish comes from.
Search your Suno or other prompts for artist names. Replace them with a description of the sound. The result often gets better, because the model gets an instruction instead of a label.
For every track you've already published, note the tool, the date and the prompt. Five minutes per track, and you'll have an answer if anyone asks.
On the Imaginode canvas, every audio track keeps the prompt and model that produced it, which does this for you. To go further on audio, our guide to making an AI audio series shows a full pipeline.
How we analysed this
Written on November 8, 2026 from Billboard's November 7 article by Bill Donahue, which quotes the complaint and statements from Authentic Brands Group and Suno, Vice's November 7 article by Caleb Catlin, and AllHipHop's November 7 article for the damages Eight Mile Style seeks. The screenshots come from these pages and from Suno's home page, captured on November 8, 2026.
We have not read the complaints themselves: quotes and figures are those reported by these outlets. Nothing has been ruled on, these are allegations. Disclosure: Imaginode, Frank's product, also offers AI music generation.
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