Major record labels launch lawsuit against AI music generators
The Recording Industry Association of America has submitted lawsuits on behalf of the three major record labels against two artificial intelligence companies, who have been accused of copyright infringement.
The legal document, submitted on June 24th, includes Sony Music Entertainment, Universal Music Group, and Warner Records among the plaintiffs. The two AI-music generators are Suno and Udio, who are on the receiving ends of lawsuits filed in the US District Court for the District of Massachusetts and the the US District Court for the Southern District of New York, respectively.
According to the RIAA, the lawsuits have been initiated due to alleged “mass infringement of copyrighted sound recordings copied and exploited without permission by two multi-million-dollar music generation services.”
In the lawsuit, the RIAA also allege that Suno and Udio have “admitted” to using copyrighted music as a tool to train their artificial intelligence technology, which they claim doesn’t align with the “fair use” ruling regarding usage.
As this is previously uncharted legal territory in music, there is yet to be a precedent set and the US courts have yet to make a ruling on whether using copyrighted music to train AI is against the law. Naturally, those on different sides of the case are disputing whether it is “fair use” to use licensed music in this capacity, and this is the issue at the heart of the lawsuit.
In a statement, RIAA chairman, Mitch Glazier, explained why the lawsuit has been brought forward. He firmly stated: “The music community has embraced AI and we are already partnering and collaborating with responsible developers to build sustainable AI tools centered on human creativity that put artists and songwriters in charge.”
Glazier continued: “But we can only succeed if developers are willing to work together with us. Unlicensed services like Suno and Udio that claim it’s ‘fair’ to copy an artist’s life’s work and exploit it for their own profit without consent or pay set back the promise of genuinely innovative AI for us all.”
Additionally, the RIAA claim in their lawsuit that users of Suno and Udio have successfully “generated sound-a-likes of numerous sound recordings using Suno and Udio, including The Temptations’ My Girl, Green Day’s American Idiot, Mariah Carey’s All I Want for Christmas, along with recordings by Chuck Berry, James Brown, and others.”
The latest development arrives after Sony Music Entertainment last month shared a document questioning companies, such as Google and OpenAI, over whether they have used its songs without permission to train artificial intelligence systems.
A letter was sent to over 700 firms asking them to prove whether they’ve used music owned by the company or not. Sony suggested that it has suspicions that these companies “may already have made unauthorized uses” of their catalogue.
As this is new legal territory, it’s an extremely complex matter for the US courts to tackle, and will likely be a lengthy, drawn-out process.
This is a developing story.
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