Elvis Presley

Elvis Presley’s rights holders and Eminem publisher Eight Mile Style filed separate lawsuits against AI music generator Suno on November 6 in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California. Both cases raise an unglamorous but essential question: who, if anyone, authorized the uses alleged? The filings concern different rights issues, and neither is a court finding. The song may be the fun part; authorization is the paperwork nobody wants to sing.

One case centers on Elvis’s voice and likeness

The Presley plaintiffs allege that Suno used Presley’s voice and likeness without authorization. Their complaint also brings copyright claims and invokes Tennessee’s ELVIS Act, a state law concerning unauthorized use of a person’s name, image, voice, or likeness. That is the plaintiffs’ legal theory in this case—not a ruling that the law applies here or a preview of how a judge will decide it. The Los Angeles Times reported on the filing and the act, while the complaint lays out the allegations themselves.

That distinction matters because AI-generated sound can raise more than one kind of rights question. A voice-and-likeness claim is not automatically the same thing as a claim about a song’s composition. The Presley complaint brings both kinds of claims, but the filing does not establish that Suno did what the plaintiffs allege. Courts will have to sort the claims from the evidence, which is less like a dramatic encore and more like a very long sound check.

Eight Mile Style brings a separate composition dispute

Eight Mile Style’s lawsuit is a separate case. The publisher alleges infringement involving musical compositions it says it controls. That is the central distinction: this complaint concerns claimed rights in compositions, rather than the Presley plaintiffs’ voice-and-likeness allegations. The two complaints should not be blended into one mega-lawsuit just because both name Suno and involve AI music. Music rights are a stack of permissions, not one enormous backstage wristband.

Suno disputes the allegations, according to the Los Angeles Times. For listeners, artists, songwriters, and publishers, the cases put a real industry question into the courtroom: what kind of authorization is needed when a tool generates music that may involve someone’s voice or protected compositions? The answer is not settled by the filing of a complaint, and the Northern California venue does not itself signal a local music-market impact. For now, the useful takeaway is simple: these are two active disputes with different claims, not a court-approved rulebook for AI music. The technology can generate a chorus quickly; permission still has to be worked out the old-fashioned way, with people arguing over who owns what.