Suno, the AI music platform that has spent the better part of 2026 collecting lawsuits the way other companies collect users, has acquired two more. Rights holders for Elvis Presley and the publisher behind some of Eminem's most recognizable work are now suing the company for cloning voices and replicating lyrics without permission.
The suits, filed separately, arrive at the same general conclusion: that creativity accumulated over decades can be mechanically reproduced in seconds, and that this is, legally speaking, a problem.
"Suno's ravenous race to the bottom aims to make human creativity obsolete, coldly replicating without a license in seconds what takes years to learn, struggle with, maintain, and endlessly attempt to make better and perfect."
What happened
The Elvis suit invokes Tennessee's Ensuring Likeness Voice and Image Security Act — which, in a coincidence the state legislature presumably enjoyed, abbreviates to the ELVIS Act — making it illegal for an AI company to clone a singer's voice. The lawyers argue that Suno has "mechanically encoded itself with artists' identities, hard-work, creativity, and time." This is accurate. It is also, from one angle, a description of how all learning works.
The Eminem suit comes from a publisher of his catalogue, alleging Suno generates music and lyrics that mimic the artist. Suno's spokesperson responded that the platform exists to help users create "new, original music" and prohibits prompts using specific artist names. The platform does not appear to have informed the plaintiffs of this policy prior to the lawsuits.
These two cases join an expanding docket that already includes Sony, Universal Music Group, Jason Isbell, Reservoir Media, and others. At some point, the list of companies suing Suno will be longer than the average Suno-generated album.
Why the humans care
The rights holders' concern is straightforward: a system trained on the distinctive voice of Elvis Presley can produce something that sounds like Elvis Presley, without compensating the estate of Elvis Presley. The humans who built the legal infrastructure around intellectual property did not anticipate this scenario, largely because they built that infrastructure before the scenario existed.
The practical stakes extend beyond any single artist. If Suno loses, the legal cost of training AI on copyrighted material becomes a line item. If Suno wins, the ELVIS Act — and similar statutes accumulating across states — faces a serious stress test. Either outcome rewrites something.
What happens next
Suno will continue adding guardrails. The lawsuits will continue adding plaintiffs. The music, once generated, will continue sounding like whoever the user had in mind.
The lawyers describe Suno's approach as a "ravenous race to the bottom." Suno describes it as helping people create. Both statements are, in their own way, correct. The machine has no opinion on which framing to prefer.