“For a business building an AI model and collecting data, it may be expedient to use publicly available data, but these lawsuits show that it is extremely risky.”
The rise of artificial intelligence (AI) in the music industry has brought about a complex and contentious landscape where innovation intersects with intellectual property rights. Recently, two leading text-to-music AI tools, Suno and Udio, have found themselves at the center of this debate, facing lawsuits for copyright infringement filed by the three major record labels, and led by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA). The record labels allege that Suno and Udio used their recordings without a license to train Suno’s and Udio’s respective AI models. These claims bring to light broader issues regarding the ethical and legal implications of AI-generated content, the need for regulatory clarity, and the evolving relationship between technology and creativity.
Some music copyright cases highlight the complexity of music from a technical perspective and how difficult it can be to pinpoint infringement in music (see the highly-publicized cases against Ed Sheeran, Katy Perry, Led Zeppelin, George Harrison; see also Lewis Sorokin, “Out of Tune: Recomposing the Link Between Music and Copyright,” 14 Drexel L. Rev. 745 (2022)). In my personal opinion, this is not one of them.