On Monday, August 31, 2026, a group of musicians filed a class action lawsuit against Suno, the AI music generator, in the U.S. District Court for the District of Massachusetts, alleging that Suno violates the publicity rights of musicians.
Jason Isbell, David Lowery, Guy Forsyth, and Eduardo Calle are the named plaintiffs in the lawsuit. The complaint alleges that “Suno built and trained a model to index musicians by name. It encoded musicians’ identities into its AI model to create its commercial product without consent, and now exploits those identities by publicly using musicians’ names to Suno’s considerable commercial benefit.” Suno allows users to type in a musician’s name in order to create “a musician-based channel with a song, description, and graphic invoking the musician’s identity.” In essence, Suno allows users to type in a musician’s name in order to retrieve “a set of performer-specific representations that is can use to generate a response associated with that musician.” The complaint argues that “[t]here is no reason for [Suno’s AI] model to have any awareness of detailed identity features unique to a performer in this manner unless it was trained to do so.”
Previous lawsuits filed against Suno involved records companies and the rights to specific recordings. This lawsuit, however, argues that “the identity right belongs to the performer regardless of who owns the copyright in an underlying recording unless the identity right is separately licensed.” The complaint alleges that Suno “operationalizes and monetizes [musicians’ identities] through its name-indexed platform which dilutes the commercial value of musicians’ identities.” The complaint states that Suno projects $1 billion in revenue by 2028 and “[w]ithout judicial intervention, the musicians whose identities form the foundation of that billion dollars will receive none of it.”
Additional Reading
Jason Isbell, other musicians sue Suno over AI training, Reuters (September 1, 2026)
Lowery et al v. Suno, Inc. (Case No. 1:2026cv14005)
Complaint in Lowery et al v. Suno, Inc.
Record Companies File Lawsuits Against AI Music Generators, Justia Legal News (July 17, 2024)
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