US Record Labels Sue AI Music Generators Suno and Udio for Copyright Infringement

[highplainsdem]

Source: Wired

The music industry has officially declared war on Suno and Udio, two of the most prominent AI music generators. A group of music labels including Universal Music Group, Warner Music Group, and Sony Music Group has filed lawsuits in US federal court on Monday morning alleging copyright infringement on a “massive scale.”

The plaintiffs seek damages up to $150,000 per work infringed. The lawsuit against Suno is filed in Massachusetts, while the case against Udio’s parent company Uncharted Inc. was filed in New York. Suno and Udio did not immediately respond to a request to comment.

“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,” Recording Industry Association of America chair and CEO Mitch Glazier said in a press release.

-snip-

One example provided in the lawsuit describes how the labels generated songs extremely similar to Chuck Berry’s 1958 rock hit “Johnny B. Goode” in Suno by using prompts like “1950s rock and roll, rhythm & blues, 12 bar blues, rockabilly, energetic male vocalist, singer guitarist,” along with snippets of the song’s lyrics. One song almost exactly replicated the “Go, Johnny, go” chorus; the plaintiffs attached side-by-side transcriptions of the scores and argued that such overlap was only possible because Suno had trained on copyrighted work.

-snip-

Read more: https://www.wired.com/story/ai-music-generators-suno-and-udio-sued-for-copyright-infringement/

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Good.

The article refers to one example of Udio's IP theft, too - close copies of Mariah Carey's All I Want For Christmas Is You.

I posted video about that in a reply in General Discussion on June 1: https://www.democraticunderground.com/100219001472#post3

Here's that video:

[highplainsdem]

1. 404 Media article including the full text of the lawsuit with a long list of songs the labels know were stolen:

https://www.404media.co/listen-to-the-ai-generated-ripoff-songs-that-got-udio-and-suno-sued/

[cstanleytech]

2. It's going to be interesting to see how these cases play out, that's for sure.

[sir pball]

3. I was waiting for this. Authors and visual artists are insignificant peons but do NOT piss off the music industry.

The former groups, while of course being savaged by AI and deserving protections, just don't have the resources or industry groups to mount an effective defense.

The music industry, on the other hand…I would not want Sony and Universal's legal teams after me. The only way this could be worse for the AI companies is if the film industry gets offended…then cometh The Mouse.