Elvis Presley rights holders sue AI music generator over licensing, copyright violations

The plaintiffs say the AI music generator Suno directly infringed on Presley’s name, image and likeness and copyrights by training its models on protected materials.SAN FRANCISCO (CN) — Elvis Presley Enterprises leads a coalition of plaintiffs suing the artificial intelligence music generator Suno, claiming the platform unlawfully uses The King’s name, image and likeness and directly infringes on copyrighted work.The plaintiffs — consisting of companies and individuals who own or have exclusive control of Presley’s name, image, likeness and copyrights — claim Suno trained its models on copyrighted materials and allows users to generate songs that mimic Presley’s distinctive voice, all without authorization from the appropriate parties.The plaintiffs accuse Suno of violating Tennessee’s Ensuring Likeness, Voice, and Image Security Act, also known as the ELVIS Act, which expanded state law protecting against the unauthorized use of someone’s likeness to include a person’s voice.They further accuse Suno of direct copyright infringement “at a scale never seen before.”“Suno is the embodiment of why the ELVIS Act was so essentially required. All of the humanity, history, despair and triumph that constitutes Elvis’ identity was stolen and is stored on servers and harnessed by Suno to make massive amounts of money, despite Suno being there for none of what it took to create, maintain, or attempt to live up to this image, and without license, permission, or payment,” the plaintiffs said in their complaint filed Friday in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California.“Suno did so intentionally, maliciously and fraudulently to financially benefit itself and artificially compete with Elvis’ likeness and copyrights, and continues to do so to this day.”The plaintiffs push back on recent statements made by Suno that it does not “reprise specific melodies from songs someone else wrote” and “has never allowed prompts for specific artists or copyrighted songs,” providing multiple exhibits containing nearly 50 recorded examples of what they say is Suno directly infringing on both Presley’s likeness and their copyrights.“These outputs, and the numerous examples discussed below, represent ‘output that contain a voice that [i]s “readily identifiable” as and solely “attributable to” [Elvis Presley]’ despite Suno denying that by its own practices and design that such output exists,” they say.In addition to the Presley rights holders, a second group of plaintiffs who have exclusive control over the rights to hundreds of other songs, including Chubby Checker’s 1955 hit “Let’s Twist Again,” known as the Raleigh plaintiffs, provided three more examples of Suno directly infringing on their copyrights.In total, the plaintiff groups say Suno infringed on 859 combined works.“The Elvis and Raleigh plaintiffs never authorized Suno to copy, reproduce or otherwise use Elvis’ NIL or the works for AI training or any other purpose,” they say.The plaintiffs additionally assert claims of violations of Tennessee’s common law right of publicity, circumvention of copyright protection measures and removal or alteration of copyright management information.They are asking the court for an injunction prohibiting Suno from further infringement of the works, ordering Suno to destroy any unauthorized copies, including those in data sets, and a complete record of training data, along with damages for both plaintiff groups.A representative for Suno did not immediately respond to a request for comment.In a statement to Courthouse News, Lark-Marie Antón, a representative for the plaintiffs, said “the complaint and accompanying exhibits speak for themselves.”“The name, image, likeness and music of Elvis Presley are among the most valuable intellectual property assets in the world. We protect those rights vigorously,” she said.Both plaintiff groups are represented by attorneys Richard Busch, Mark Block, David Niemierzycki and Andrew Davis of Adams & Reese, along with Jeffrey Faucette and Martin Glick of Skaggs Faucette.The attorneys also represent Eight Mile Style, the music publisher and copyright administration company that owns and administers the rights to license songs by Marshall Mathers, also known as Eminem, in a separate copyright lawsuit against Suno.In that suit, similarly filed Friday in the Northern District of California, Eight Mile Style accuses Suno of training its models on copyrighted work and using copyrighted lyrics in its outputs.“Armed with the illicit copies of millions of copyrighted works — including Eight Mile Style’s works — Suno’s AI model can create an entire song, including the instrumentals, vocals and entirely generated lyrics, all thanks to the training on these unlicensed copies of the works in its library,” Eight Mile Style says in its complaint.In late October, Elvis Presley Enterprises sued Anthropic, accusing the artificial intelligence developer of direct copyright infringement.Subscribe to our free newslettersOur weekly newsletter Closing Arguments offers the latest about ongoing trials, major litigation and rulings in courthouses around the U.S. and the world, while the monthly Under the Lights dishes the legal dirt from Hollywood, sports, Big Tech and the arts.Additional Reads