Elvis Presley voice deepfake — Nov 2024

What happened

In November 2024, Elvis Presley Enterprises initiated a lawsuit against the AI music platform Suno, alleging that the company violated the late artist's likeness rights by facilitating the creation of unauthorized synthetic voice clones. The legal action, filed by attorney Richard Busch, claims that Suno intentionally and fraudulently harnessed Elvis Presley’s identity to generate revenue and compete with his established copyrights. The complaint asserts that Suno’s platform allows users to produce audio that mimics Presley’s distinct vocal timbre and resonance, directly challenging the company's previous assertions that its models do not permit the generation of specific real-world voices.

This case is one of the first major legal tests of Tennessee’s ELVIS (Ensuring Likeness Voice and Image Security) Act, a 2024 statute designed to protect musicians from unauthorized AI-driven voice and image cloning. While Suno maintains that it prohibits prompts for specific artists and employs screening tools to prevent misuse, the lawsuit argues these safeguards are insufficient and that the platform has been used to generate numerous synthetic tracks that sound remarkably like Presley. Beyond the voice cloning allegations, the suit also accuses Suno of training its AI models on copyrighted songs from the Presley catalog, including hits like "Can’t Help Falling in Love" and "Don’t Be Cruel." The litigation seeks to address the broader implications of AI technology in the music industry, with the plaintiffs arguing that such tools aim to make human creativity obsolete by replicating the work of legendary artists without authorization.