Major Record Labels Sue AI Start-Ups for Copyright Infringement

The post Major Record Labels Sue AI Start-Ups for Copyright Infringement appeared first on Consequence .

The three major record labels Universal Music Group, Sony Music, and Warner Music Group have filed lawsuits against AI start-up companies Suno and Udio alleging copyright infringement.

Brought forth by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), the lawsuits claim Suno and Udio used the labels’ recordings to train their AI models without permission “at an almost unimaginable scale.”

Both Suno and Udio allow users to create original songs based on text prompts, generating a combination of lyrics, vocals, and instrumentals. Notably, the latter was used to create the viral hit “BBL Drizzy.”

The lawsuits note that songs generated by Suno and Udio sound just like Mariah Carey’s “All I Want For Christmas Is You,” The Beach Boys’ “I Get Around,” ABBA’s “Dancing Queen,” The Temptations’ “My Girl,” and Green Day’s “American Idiot,” among others. Bruce Springsteen and Michael Jackson’s voices were also cited as examples of copyright infringement.

“Building and operating [these services] requires at the outset copying and ingesting massive amounts of data to ‘train’ a software ‘model’ to generate outputs,” the lawsuit says. “For [these services], this process involved copying decades worth of the world’s most popular sound recordings and then ingesting those copies [to] generate outputs that imitate the qualities of genuine human sound recordings.”

In a press release, RIAA chief legal officer Ken Doroshow added, “These are straightforward cases of copyright infringement involving unlicensed copying of sound recordings on a massive scale. Suno and Udio are attempting to hide the full scope of their infringement rather than putting their services on a sound and lawful footing.”

Besides barring the companies from training their models on the copyrighted songs, the lawsuit is seeking damages of up to $150,00 per work and other fees.

It’s worth noting that Suno investor Antonio Rodriguez admitted the company doesn’t have licenses for the music it trains on in a recent interview with Rolling Stone . “Honestly, if we had deals with labels when this company got started, I probably wouldn’t have invested in it,” he said. “I think that they needed to make this product without the constraints.”

Universal in particular began fighting against potentially infringing content created with generative AI last year, when a fake Drake and The Weekend song went viral. It was also part of a lawsuit this past October over the use of copyrighted lyrics. More recently, AI concerns were a sticking point in its negotiations with TikTok for a new licensing deal.

In April, the non-profit organization Artist Rights Alliance issued an open letter calling for responsible AI music practices . It was signed by more than 200 artists, including Billie Eilish, Greta Van Fleet, and Pearl Jam.

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Major Record Labels Sue AI Start-Ups for Copyright Infringement
Eddie Fu