Two artificial intelligence (AI) companies, Suno and Udio, faced a huge legal attack on Monday, June 24, when a collection of the major record companies went on the offensive against the AI companies that they see as engaging in mass copyright infringement of their record labels. The record companies that went on the attack were Sony Music, Universal Music Group, and Warner Records.
The basis of the suit is that, the record companies allege, the AI companies used recordings of the labels to train music-generating AI programs. The AI companies allegedly did that without permission, and the commercial nature of their businesses and programs is an issue because the music it creates, which was generated based on copyrighted music, will “directly compete with, cheapen, and ultimately drown out” the work of the humans it copied.
The suits were brought in federal court. The Udio case was brought in New York and the Suno case in Massachusetts. Udio representatives did not respond to a request for a statement, but Suno CEO Mikey Shulman said, in a statement, “Our technology is transformative; it is designed to generate completely new outputs, not to memorize and regurgitate pre-existing content.”
Though Shulman alleges that the outputs are “new,” the lawsuit alleges that that is not always the case. Rather, it argues, users of Suno and Udio have been able to recreate certain elements of famous songs, including The Temptations’ “My Girl,” Mariah Carey’s “All I Want for Christmas Is You” and James Brown’s “I Got You (I Feel Good).”
Further, it argues that the users of those AI services could generate vocals for the beats that are “indistinguishable” from famous human musicians known for their stirring vocals, like Michael Jackson, Bruce Springsteen, and ABBA. The music labels then asked for the courts to award statutory damages of up to $150,000 for each song the AI programs of the defendant companies allegedly copied.
The suit comes alongside much concern from artists and others who work in creative fields of work who worry that AI programs will copy, without permission or remuneration, their best work, and then use it to output work that competes with theirs and sometimes even exceeds it. Due to how Large Langauge Models work, which is by learning from vast amounts of data, it is hard for AI companies to argue that is not the case, at least in some situations.
Reflecting that concern of artists in a statement, Recording Industry Association of America CEO Mitch Glazier said, “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.”
However, some argue that human artists will always win out. For example, BandLab founder and CEO Kuok Meng Ru, said that AI will never be able to complete a finished product that competes with talented artists, and that AI programs help people use their creativity to build great and new things, not copy the work of others.
“It’s not called SongFinisher. It’s called SongStarter. It’s not trying to replace people’s creativity… (with) a vending machine approach of a magic button where you press and a song comes out,” Kuok said in an AFP interview. He continued, “You still need to use your human creativity to build on that, to turn it into something.”
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