Music Labels Sue AI Song Generators For Copyright Infringement

Introduction

The world’s biggest record companies, including Sony Music Entertainment, Universal Music Group Recordings and Warner Records are suing AI song generators Suno and Udio, which have both recently released programmes allowing users to generate songs from text prompts. The record labels are claiming that AI companies are exploiting the work of well-known artists and demanding $150,000 compensation for each work produced.

The Grounds of the lawsuit

The labels have accused Suno and Udio of “copying decades worth of the world’s most popular sound recordings” to train their models, and that they have been “deliberately evasive” when asked about it, as neither company has publicly disclosed its training data. Ken Doroshaw, Chief Legal Officer of the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), which announced the lawsuits, has stated that they are “necessary to reinforce the most basic rules of the road for the responsible, ethical, and lawful development of generative AI systems and to bring Suno’s and Udio’s blatant infringement to an end.” In their complaints, the music labels stated that they were able to prompt Suno into producing outputs that ‘match’ copyrighted work from artists ranging from Jason Derulo to Mariah Carey. The chairman of the RIAA has said that the industry is unopposed to collaborating with “responsible” AI developers but “unlicensed services like Suno and Udio that claim it’s ‘fair’ to copy an artist’s life work and exploit it for their own use without consent or pay set back the promise of genuinely innovative AI for us all”.

The Position of suno and udio

Mickey Shulman, the chief executive of Suno, has said that the technology was “designed to generate completely new outputs, not to memorise and regurgitate pre-existing content”. Udio has also stated in the past that the company has “implemented and continue to refine state-of-the-art filters to ensure our model does not reproduce copyrighted works or artists’ voices”.

Moving forward: the future relationship between ai and music

AI has consistently been a heated debate amongst those involved in the music industry. Opinions are divided between utilising the creative possibilities of new technology and concerns about its legality regarding copyright and intellectual property.

This lawsuit is not the first action taken. In March 2024, Tennessee set a precedent by becoming the first US state to pass legislation protecting those working in the industry against the potential dangers of AI, with the key goal to ensure that AI tools could not replicate an artist’s voice without consent. The following month, over 200 artists signed a document calling for AI tech companies, developers and streaming platforms to stop using AI to “infringe upon and devalue the rights of human artists”. This does not mean that labels are wholly opposed to AI; several are currently working on projects with AI companies such as UMG’s partnership with voice cloning start up: SoundLabs.

However, the result of this lawsuit will determine to what extent companies need to disclose their training data, and the relationship between labels and AI programmes in the future. It will likely mean that stricter licensing is the only way forward.

By Molly McCreary