{"id":207852,"date":"2024-08-05T18:24:50","date_gmt":"2024-08-05T17:24:50","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.musicbusinessworldwide.com\/?p=207852"},"modified":"2024-08-05T18:24:50","modified_gmt":"2024-08-05T17:24:50","slug":"as-suno-and-udio-admit-training-ai-with-unlicensed-music-record-industry-says-theres-nothing-fair-about-stealing-an-artists-lifes-work","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.musicbusinessworldwide.com\/as-suno-and-udio-admit-training-ai-with-unlicensed-music-record-industry-says-theres-nothing-fair-about-stealing-an-artists-lifes-work\/","title":{"rendered":"As Suno and Udio admit training AI with unlicensed music, record industry says: ‘There\u2019s nothing fair about stealing an artist\u2019s life\u2019s work.’"},"content":{"rendered":"

In June, controversial AI music startups Suno and Udio were sued by the major record companies<\/a> for allegedly training their systems using the majors’ recordings without permission.<\/p>\n

Now, in responses filed in US federal courts on Thursday (August 1), the two AI companies have pretty much admitted that they used copyrighted recordings from the recording companies that sued them.<\/p>\n

Suno, for example, explained<\/a> that its “training data includes essentially all music files of reasonable quality that are accessible on the open Internet, abiding by paywalls, password protections, and the like, combined with similarly available text descriptions.”<\/p>\n

Both Suno and Udio argued, however, that their use of copyrighted materials – owned by Sony Music Group<\/strong>, Universal Music Group<\/strong> and Warner Music Group – <\/strong>falls under the \u201cfair use\u201d exemption to US copyright law.<\/p>\n

The RIAA, the organization that represents the recorded music industry in the US, was swift in its counter-response, describing the companies’ admission regarding using copyrighted music to train their AI as a “major concession” in the high-stakes legal proceedings.<\/p>\n

\u201cAfter months of evading and misleading, defendants have finally admitted their massive unlicensed copying of artists\u2019 recordings. It\u2019s a major concession of facts they spent months trying to hide and acknowledged only when forced by a lawsuit,” said an RIAA spokesperson.<\/p>\n

“Their industrial scale infringement does not qualify as \u2018fair use\u2019. There\u2019s nothing fair about stealing an artist\u2019s life\u2019s work, extracting its core value, and repackaging it to compete directly with the originals, as the Supreme Court just held in its landmark Warhol Foundation case.”<\/p>\n

<\/div>
<\/div>
<\/div> <\/div> <\/span><\/p>\n

Suno and Udio argued that their use of the material falls with \u201cfair use\u201d exemptions, and accused the recording companies of launching the lawsuits to prevent competition.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat the major record labels really don\u2019t want is competition,\u201d states Suno\u2019s response, which was filed in the US District Court for the District of Massachusetts, and can be read in full here.<\/a><\/p>\n

\u201cWhere Suno sees musicians, teachers, and everyday people using a new tool to create original music, the labels see a threat to their market share.\u201d<\/p>\n

The lawsuits are an \u201cattempt to misuse IP rights to shield incumbents from competition and reduce the universe of people who are equipped to create new expression,\u201d the Suno response added.<\/p>\n

Udio’s response was filed in the US District Court for the Southern District of New York, and can be read in full here.<\/a><\/p>\n

<\/div> <\/div> <\/span><\/p>\n

RIAA’s spokesperson added that Suno and Udio “had a ready lawful path to bring their products and tools to the market \u2013 obtain consent before using their work, as many of their competitors already have. That unfair competition is directly at issue in these cases.<\/p>\n

“Their vision of the \u2018future of music\u2019 is apparently one in which fans will no longer enjoy music by their favorite artists because those artists can no longer earn a living.”<\/p>\n

“After months of evading and misleading, defendants have finally admitted their massive unlicensed copying of artists\u2019 recordings.”<\/p>\n

RIAA spokesperson<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

They continued: “While defendants continue to deliberately misinform, this case is about unlicensed copying to train their model, not the outputs created. And even as they misdirect, they also engage in deception. Suno claims the use of artist-specific prompts is \u2018unrepresentative of what real people do with Suno,\u2019 \u2018a flagrant violation of the rules governing use of the platform,\u2019 and that instead they \u2018encourage originality.\u2019<\/p>\n

“But if this is true, then why, in this presentation to venture capitalists, is Suno\u2019s co-founder caught on video<\/a> using \u2018Hendrix\u2019 as a prompt in his own use of his platform to demonstrate its capabilities?\u201d”<\/p>\n

<\/div> <\/div> <\/span><\/p>\n

Both Suno and Udio’s responses were filed on behalf of the AI companies by lawyers from Latham & Watkins LLP<\/strong>, the same law firm that is defending Spotify<\/strong><\/a> in the lawsuit filed against it by The Mechanical Licensing Collective<\/strong>, over Spotify\u2019s decision to reduce mechanical royalties paid in the US as it now considers its Premium paid music subscriptions to be \u201cbundles\u201d with audiobooks.<\/p>\n

Both the Suno and Udio lawsuits share a lot of the same language, and make similar arguments.<\/p>\n

They argue that AI music generators like Suno and Udio make \u201cintermediate\u201d copies that are \u201cnever seen or heard by anyone,\u201d and that courts have previously ruled that such intermediate copies fall under fair use.<\/p>\n

They cite precedents that include a ruling that it\u2019s legal to make thumbnails of copyrighted photos in order to create image-search engines, and that it\u2019s legal to to ingest student papers into plagiarism tools.<\/p>\n

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\u201cLet there be no doubt: the outputs here are, as a rule, non-infringing,\u201d the Suno response states.<\/p>\n

While there have been previous copyright lawsuits against AI developers by music publishers<\/a>, authors<\/a>, and news organizations<\/a>, the lawsuits against Suno and Udio are believed to be the first launched by recorded music rights holders.<\/p>\n

In lawsuits filed in late June, recording companies Sony Music Entertainment<\/strong>, UMG Recordings<\/strong> and Warner Records<\/strong>, among others, presented evidence<\/a> that both Suno and Udio had generated material that was, in some instances, almost identical to copyrighted tracks such as Michael Buble<\/strong>\u2019s Sway<\/em> and Chuck Berry<\/strong>\u2019s Johnny B. Goode<\/em>.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat the major record labels really don\u2019t want is competition.”<\/p>\n

Suno, in a response to a copyright lawsuit filed by recording companies<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

In their responses, the AI companies alleged that the record companies had violated the AI generators\u2019 terms of service, and also possibly violated the publishing copyrights on those songs, by prompting the tools to create outputs similar to existing songs.<\/p>\n

\u201cFor example, plaintiffs evidently inputted the full lyrics from the song Johnny B. Goode<\/em>, along with the prompt, \u20181950s rock and roll, rhythm & blues, 12 bar blues, rockabilly, energetic male vocalist, singer guitarist,\u2019 and found that the output \u2018replicates the highly distinctive rhythm of the original\u2019s chorus, and uses the same melodic shape on the phrases \u2018go Johnny, go, go\u2019,\u2019 Suno\u2019s response states.<\/p>\n

But that doesn\u2019t mean that the version of the song Suno trained on was the recording owned by UMG Recordings, because there are \u201ccountless other recordings of the song,\u201d Suno said.<\/p>\n

And \u201cwhen plaintiffs\u2019 lawyers prompted Suno with the lyrics to the musical composition Johnny B. Goode<\/em>, they\u2026 apparently committed prima facie<\/i> acts of infringement of those third-party publishers\u2019 rights.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cLet there be no doubt: the outputs here are, as a rule, non-infringing.”<\/p>\n

Suno, in a response to a copyright lawsuit filed by recording companies<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The responses cited a 1971 change to copyright laws that protected recordings (previously, only published music had been protected under copyright law), but \u2013 Suno and Udio claim \u2013 created a lot of leeway for record companies to create covers of songs that have similar sounds to the original recordings.<\/p>\n

\u201cInterestingly, the very reason this statutory provision exists is because the record labels wanted it,\u201d the Suno response stated.<\/p>\n

Both lawsuits suggested the record companies are fighting a losing battle against technological progress.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen records first began to gain commercial traction in the 1930s, musicians aggressively lobbied against their use, warning that replacing orchestras with pre-recorded performances would leave real musicians \u2018on the \u2018human scrap heap\u2019,” the Suno and Udio responses stated.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen synthesizers began to gain popularity in the 1960s, leaders of the American Federation of Musicians passed a resolution banning use of the technology for fear that it would be \u2018used to replace instrumentalists.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Suno and Udio suggest that the record companies may have themselves violated music publishing copyrights<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":46,"featured_media":207987,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[130670,131536,132081],"class_list":["post-207852","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","tag-copyright-lawsuit","tag-suno","tag-udio"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.musicbusinessworldwide.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/207852","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.musicbusinessworldwide.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.musicbusinessworldwide.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.musicbusinessworldwide.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/46"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.musicbusinessworldwide.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=207852"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.musicbusinessworldwide.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/207852\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.musicbusinessworldwide.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/207987"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.musicbusinessworldwide.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=207852"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.musicbusinessworldwide.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=207852"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.musicbusinessworldwide.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=207852"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}