Weeks after being hit with copyright infringement lawsuits, artificial intelligence music startups Suno and Udio are now accusing the record labels that filed the lawsuits of trying to stifle competition in the music industry. Both companies acknowledged using copyrighted material to train their music-generating artificial intelligence models in separate legal filings, arguing that doing so was legal under fair use doctrine.
The lawsuit against Suno and Udio was filed in June by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), which represents major record labels such as Universal Music Group (UMG), Sony Music Entertainment and Warner Music Group. Both cases accuse Suno and Udio of copyright infringement involving the unauthorized reproduction of sound recordings on a large scale. The RIAA is seeking damages of up to $150,000 per infringed work.
Udio and Suno’s artificial intelligence music generation tools allow users to create songs by inputting written descriptions. According to the RIAA, some of the tracks sound identical to the voices of famous artists such as Bruce Springsteen, Michael Jackson and ABBA. In May, Suno said its music generator had been used 12 million times since its launch in December 2023.
Suno and Udio said in response that the lawsuits underscore the music industry’s opposition to competition. “Copyright law is designed to encourage, not prohibit, the generation of new artistic expressions,” Udio writes in its filing. “In accordance with long-standing principles, what Udio does – use existing recordings as data for mining and analysis. , to identify sound patterns in various musical styles, all with the aim of enabling people to make new creations of their own – and is a typically ‘fair’ use under copyright law.
In a blog post accompanying its filing, Suno said major record labels misunderstood how its artificial intelligence music tools worked, likening the training of its models to “a child learning to write new music by carefully listening to rock music.” ‘s rock song” instead of just learning how to write a new rock song. Copying and repeating copyrighted tracks. Suno also acknowledged training its model on online music, noting that other AI vendors such as OpenAI, Google and Apple also obtain training data from the open web.
“Learning is not a copyright infringement. It never was and it is not now.
“Much of the open web does contain copyrighted material, some of which is owned by major record labels,” Suno said in a blog post. “Learning is not an infringement. Never has been and is not the case now.
In response to the Music Ally statement filed by Suno and Udio, the RIAA said that unlike competing services such as YouTube, the companies failed to obtain appropriate consent for the use of copyrighted works before bringing their tools to market. “It’s unfair to steal an artist’s life’s work, extract its core value, and then repackage it to compete directly with the original,” the RIAA said. “Their vision for the ‘future of music’ is clearly one in which fans will no longer appreciate them Music from favorite artists because these artists can no longer make a living.”
