Image source, Getty Images
- author, Natalie Sherman
- role, BBC News
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One of the world's largest record companies is suing two artificial intelligence (AI) startups for alleged copyright infringement in a potentially landmark case.
Companies including Sony Music, Universal Music Group and Warner Records claim that Snow and Woody have committed copyright infringement on an “almost unimaginable scale.”
The duo claim that their software steals music and “spits out” similar works, and are seeking damages of $150,000 (£118,200) for each work.
Suno did not respond to a request for comment. Udio said in a blog post on Tuesday that it has “no interest in replicating content.”
The lawsuit, announced Monday by the Recording Industry Association of America, is part of a wave of lawsuits brought by authors, news organizations and other groups challenging AI companies' right to use copyrighted material.
Massachusetts-based Suno released its first product last year and claims that more than 10 million people have used its tools to create music.
The company, which is partnered with Microsoft, charges a monthly fee for its service and recently announced it had raised $125 million from investors.
New York-based Udio (known as Uncharted Labs) is backed by prominent venture capital investors including Andreessen Horowitz.
The company released the app to the public in April and it gained almost instant fame as the tool used to create “BBL Drizzy,” a parody song related to the feud between artists Kendrick Lamar and Drake.
Until now, AI companies have argued that their use of the material is justified under the fair use principle, which allows the use of copyrighted material without a license under certain circumstances, such as for satire or news.
Proponents liken machine learning using AI tools to the way humans learn by reading, listening or watching previous works.
Udio said its system was “explicitly designed to produce music that reflects new musical ideas.”
The company added that it “implements and continues to refine cutting-edge filters to ensure our models do not reproduce copyrighted works or the voices of artists.”
“We are confident in our technology and believe that generative AI will become a mainstream force in modern society,” the company said.
But in lawsuits filed in federal courts in Massachusetts and New York, the record companies argue that the AI companies are simply making money by copying songs.
“Its use here is far from transformative, as it has no functional purpose…” [the] “The AI model is unable to ingest copyrighted recordings, other than spitting out new competing music files,” according to the lawsuit.
According to the complaint, Snow and Woody have produced works like “Pancing Queen” that even die-hard ABBA fans would have difficulty distinguishing from the band's authentic recordings.
Songs cited in Udio's lawsuit include Mariah Carey's “All I Want for Christmas is You” and The Temptations' “My Girl.”
“[The] “Their motives are clearly commercial and threaten to take away from the true human artistry that is at the heart of copyright protection,” the record companies said in the lawsuit.
They said there was nothing about AI that exempted companies from “playing by the rules”, and warned that the “large-scale theft” of recordings threatened “the entire music ecosystem”.
The lawsuit comes just months after nearly 200 artists, including Billie Eilish and Nicki Minaj, signed a letter calling for an end to “predatory” uses of artificial intelligence (AI) in the music industry.
