Universal Music Group , Sony Music and Warner Records have sued AI companies Udio and Suno for copyright infringement.
Record labels accuse the companies of using their own recordings to train AI models, Reuters reports. Udio and Suno can create innovative musical compositions based on text descriptions of music (e.g., “a dubstep song for Linus Torvalds”).
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The lawsuits, filed in federal courts in New York and Massachusetts, allege that using copyrighted material to train AI systems can lead to music that competes with and devalues the work of artists. Like other genetic AI models, Udio and Suno (which we covered separately in April) rely on a wide selection of human-created artwork. These projects teach a neural network the relationship between the words of a written description and musical styles. The labels note that the companies were intentionally vague about the sources of their training data.
Before the release of AI models in 2022, it was common practice in machine learning to use copyrighted information without permission. But now that applications of these technologies have become commercial products, rights holders have begun to seek damages. In the case of Udio and Suno, the record labels are seeking up to $150,000 in damages per song used in training.
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In the lawsuit, the labels cite specific examples of AI-generated content that allegedly recreates elements of well-known songs, including The Temptations’ “My Girl,” Mariah Carey’s “All I Want for Christmas Is You,” and James Brown’s “I Got You (I Feel Good).” They also claim that the models can produce vocals that resemble those of famous artists, including Michael Jackson and Bruce Springsteen.
Reuters claims that this is the first lawsuit specifically targeting music-producing AI, but record labels and artists have long been preparing to face the challenges of the technology. In May, Sony Music sent warning letters to more than 700 AI companies (including OpenAI, Microsoft, Google, Suno and Udio) and services , prohibiting the use of its music to train AI models.
In April, over 200 musicians signed an open letter asking AI companies to stop undermining artists’ rights. Last November, Universal Music filed a copyright infringementfor including artists’ lyrics in its Claude LLM educational data.
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Similar to the New York Times lawsuit against OpenAI over its use of training data, the outcome of the record labels’ new lawsuit could have significant implications for the future development of genetic AI in the arts. It could require companies to license all music training used to build music composition models.
Mandatory licenses for AI training data could make developing AI models financially unfeasible for small startups like Udio and Suno. However, many musicians may welcome this outcome. At the same time, such a development would not prevent large companies from developing their own AI music generators, allowing only large companies with significant resources to control music production tools in the foreseeable future.
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Source: arstechnica
