The Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) made the announcement on June 24, naming prominent labels such as Sony Music Entertainment, Universal Music Group, and Warner Records as plaintiffs.
The lawsuits against the AI music startups hinge on allegations of unauthorized copying and use of copyrighted sound recordings for training the AI models. The complaints emphasize that these AI companies must adhere to copyright laws and cannot bypass them under the guise of technological innovation. The plaintiffs argue that the AI models used by Suno and Udio have ingested vast amounts of copyrighted music to generate outputs that mimic genuine human-created recordings, thereby threatening the value and integrity of the original works.
The RIAA seeks to hold these companies accountable for what the plaintiffs describe as willful copyright infringement on a massive scale, potentially saturating the market with machine-generated content and undermining the rights and livelihoods of human artists.
“We can only succeed if developers are willing to work together with us. 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,” the statement read.
“These lawsuits are necessary to reinforce the most basic rules of the road for the responsible, ethical, and lawful development of generative AI systems and to bring Suno’s and Udio’s blatant infringement to an end,” added Ken Doroshow, RIAA chief legal officer.
Mr. Shulman criticized the litigation, saying his company tried to have “a good faith discussion” with the corporate record labels.
“Suno’s mission is to make it possible for everyone to make music. Our technology is transformative; it is designed to generate completely new outputs, not to memorize and regurgitate pre-existing content,” Mr. Schulman said.
The controversy over AI’s role in music creation has been ongoing, with discussions oscillating between its potential benefits and legal ramifications.
The Epoch Times attempted to contact Udio for a statement, but did not receive a response by the time of publication. Efforts to reach Suno AI for comment were unsuccessful.