Big Three labels sue AI firms for copyright infringement

RIAA said the cases are based on “the mass infringement of copyrighted sound recordings copied and exploited without permission by the two multi-million-dollar music-generation services.”

The plaintiffs in the cases are music companies that hold the rights to sound recordings infringed by Suno and Udio, including the Big Three labels – Sony Music Entertainment, Universal Music Group and Warner Records. The claims cover recordings by artists of multiple genres, styles and eras.

The landmark cases for responsible AI against Suno AI and Uncharted Labs Inc – the developers of Suno and Udio – were filed on 24 June in the Boston and New York federal courts, respectively. The cases seek to stop the unlicensed use of copyrighted sound recordings to train generative AI models.

They seek declarations that the two services infringed the plaintiffs’ copyrighted sound recordings, and injunctions barring the services from infringing the plaintiffs’ copyrighted sound recordings in the future. The plaintiffs are also seeking damages for the alleged infringements that have already occurred.

The RIAA says the litigation would assure artists, songwriters and rightsholders control of their works. “The music community has embraced AI and we are already partnering and collaborating with responsible developers to build sustainable AI tools centred on human creativity that put artists and songwriters in charge,” RIAA chairman and CEO Mitch Glazier said. “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.”

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. These lawsuits 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.”

While the facts of each case are distinct, they also contain a common set of core allegations regarding the training, development and operation of Suno and Udio.

“AI companies, like all other enterprises, must abide by the laws that protect human creativity and ingenuity,” an excerpt from the lawsuit reads. “There is nothing that exempts AI technology from copyright law or that excuses AI companies from playing by the rules. These lawsuits seek to enforce these basic principles.”

Some AI tech companies have argued that using copyrighted materials to train AI should be considered as ‘fair use’ because such materials are sometimes used to create new technologies or products. But music companies are arguing that fair use does not extend to generative AI because the creations of this technology directly compete with the original works.

The move has received support from music organisations such as the American Association of Independent Music, the American Federation of Musicians of the US and Canada, the Artist Rights Alliance, the National Music Publishers’ Association and the Recording Academy, among others.

The Suno and Udio complaints are available here and here.