Major record companies worldwide are suing music generation services Suno and Udio, claiming that the businesses are utilizing top artists’ copyrights to train their generative AI engines without their consent.
In a recent announcement, the Recording Industry Association of America revealed that Udio and Suno, AI music generators, are the target of lawsuits filed by companies such as Warner Records, Sony Music Entertainment, and Universal Music Group Recordings, alleging copyright violations.
The labels assert that a significant portion of all recorded pop music is composed of Suno and Udio AI models found in their libraries. “Decades’ worth of the most well-known sound recordings in the world were copied, and those copies were then ingested to generate outputs that mimic the qualities of authentic human sound recordings,” the attorneys assert. According to the claims, “it is obvious” that Suno and Udio trained using the catalogs of the labels and that both services were able to mimic recordings that were protected by copyright.
For example, Udio created a track called “Sunshine Melody” that borrowed lyrics from The Temptations and created a prompt like “my tempting 1964 girl Smokey sing Hitsville soul pop.” This track is quite similar to The Temptations’ copyrighted song “My Girl,” however Udio has since removed all of the recordings. In order to show how the melody, chords, and backup voices of the two musical scores are identical, the plaintiffs have transcribed the scores side by side. This proves that Udio’s productions are not just influenced by, but also exact replicas of the original recordings.
Udio’s co-founder and CEO, David Ding, claimed in court filings that the company’s superior outputs are the consequence of training on “publicly available and high-quality music” that can be downloaded online.
In a prior communication, Suno and Udio claimed “fair use” of the protected music; other AI businesses, such as OpenAI, have made similar claims in their AI training. However, the complaint also exposes a pattern in which Udio’s users might enter specific genres and descriptions of recordings that are protected by copyright from online music databases such as RateYourMusic.com to produce outputs containing vocal reproductions of particular artists. To support the claim that their models utilize copyrighted material without permission, 404Media exhibited this approach by demonstrating how Suno’s and Udio’s services could mimic the vocals of particular musicians.
A group of hundreds of musicians and composers, including Smokey Robinson, Billie Eilish, and the estate of Frank Sinatra, wrote an open letter in April calling for safeguards against artificial intelligence’s “assault on human creativity.”
The letter, which was sent in by the nonprofit Artist Rights Alliance, stated: “We must protect against the predatory use of AI to steal professional artists’ voices and likenesses, violate creators’ rights, and destroy the music ecosystem.”
Refusing to abide with copyright rules, the complaints contend that Suno and Udio “threaten enduring and irreparable harm to recording artists, record labels, and the music industry, inevitably reducing the quality of new music available to consumers and diminishing our shared culture