US Record Labels Sue AI Music Generators Suno and Udio for Copyright Infringement ( www.wired.com )

The music industry has officially declared war on Suno and Udio, two of the most prominent AI music generators. A group of music labels including Universal Music Group, Warner Music Group, and Sony Music Group has filed lawsuits in US federal court on Monday morning alleging copyright infringement on a “massive scale.”

The plaintiffs seek damages up to $150,000 per work infringed. The lawsuit against Suno is filed in Massachusetts, while the case against Udio’s parent company Uncharted Inc. was filed in New York. Suno and Udio did not immediately respond to a request to comment.

“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,” Recording Industry Association of America chair and CEO Mitch Glazier said in a press release.

Kowowow ,

Aren't there two guys who already "own" all possible combinations of notes they should get in on the fight too

TheReturnOfPEB , (edited )

glue balloons

smooth as silk

Grimy ,

AI tools and entertainment will become common place in the future. All these lawsuits decide is if we can have it for free or through a subscription payed to Sony and friends.

dinckelman ,

So exploiting artists is fine, but when the labels get scammed, that’s where they draw the line?

Blackmist ,

But of course. If artists want to fight for their rights, they better get their own lawyers.

dinckelman ,

How convenient, that this would never happen, because the label leeched them dry

Hacksaw ,

The best part about this is that UMG WMG and SMG all simultaneously went "you can't take an artist's life work and exploit it, that's unfair, it's OUR job to take an artist's life's work and exploit it"

pavnilschanda ,
@pavnilschanda@lemmy.world avatar

This is true in the art industry as well. Many outsourced artists from third world countries are exploited with unreasonable wages and long hours

GiveMemes ,

I mean yes to the sentiment but it would be quite a bit different if these artists signed a distribution contract with the AI company saying they got a miniscule percentage of royalties for every track somebody generated or even licensed this music to train on whatsoever.

friend_of_satan ,

The lawyers are just loving this AI bloodbath.

gedaliyah ,
@gedaliyah@lemmy.world avatar

Okay, now we're cooking!

This is like when the bad guy from the last movie teams up with the heroes at the last minute to help fight the new big bad.

Max_P ,
@Max_P@lemmy.max-p.me avatar

Because humans don't also take inspiration from other's work they've heard and unconsciously repeat part of other songs they've heard before, possibly decades ago. Never happens. Never. Humans don't profit from books they've read and apply to their career. Humans don't profit from watching other humans do the thing and then learn to do it themselves.

All AI does is do the same thing but at ridiculous scale and ridiculous speeds. We shouldn't hold progress because capitalism dictates that we shouldn't put people out of jobs. We need to prepare for the future where there is no jobs and AI replaced all of them.

Stopthatgirl7 OP ,
@Stopthatgirl7@lemmy.world avatar

Someone posted links to some of the AI generated songs, and they are straight up copying. Blatantly so. If a human made them, they would be sued, too.

overload ,

I think with all the frivolous lawsuits based on music sounding similar in cases like Kate Perry and Ed Sheeran lately, you'd be crazy to release AI generated music right now.
Marvin Gaye's estate probably have lawsuits already drafted up.

dhork ,

But a human can synthesize all those works and transform them into something new. All the AI is doing is regurgitating stuff it has heard before. I don't want to try to put a bot on the same level as human creativity.

TheMonkeyLord ,

This is a shit take

probableprotogen ,

The copyright infringment machine will obviously serve the people and not the multi-billion dollar corporations \s

Grimy ,

Multi-billion dollar corporations like Universal Music Group, Warner Music Group, and Sony Music Group?

All of music is basically owned by like 4 companies. This is them trying to make sure they own all AI generated music too.

Hacksaw ,

AI isn't "like a person" it doesn't "learn like a person" it doesn't "think like a person" it's nothing like a person. It's a a machine that creates copies of whatever you put into it. It's a machine that a real person, or group of people, own. These people TAKE all the stuff everyone else created and put it into their copy machine.

In fact it's really easy to show that it's a copy machine because the less stuff you put into it the more of a direct copy you get out of it. If you put only one song, or one artist, into it then virtually everything it creates would be direct copyright infringements. If you put all of the worlds music into it the copying becomes more blurred, more complex, more interesting, and therefore more valuable.

Sure AI is a great innovation, but if someone wants to put my work into a copying machine they're going to have to acquire it from me legally.

No one is against AI, we're just against the people who own the AI machines stealing our work without paying for it.

AlexanderESmith ,
@AlexanderESmith@social.alexanderesmith.com avatar

We need to prepare for the future where there is no jobs and AI replaced all of them.

You seem to think that the natural extension of this is that everyone who used to have a job continues to flourish, and doesn't die in the gutter because they have no money/shelter/food.

The naivity would be adorable, if it weren't also extremely dangerous and playing directly into rich assholes' plans to bleed everything dry for themselves.

SacredHeartAttack ,
@SacredHeartAttack@lemmy.world avatar

I can’t believe I’m on the music industry’s side on this. It’s a sad day when I have to root for the team that’s made it hard for me to make a living while they fight against the team that’s trying to make me obsolete.

Tregetour ,
@Tregetour@lemdro.id avatar

Staggeringly naive, tbh. Your profession will be made obsolete as a self-sustaining for-profit enterprise either way. The difference is that the tooling can either be owned exclusively by megacorp, or it can be owned by people.

It's better to be a bard relying on the charity and small custom of others than a literal sharecropper fueling Universal's proprietary model for next to nothing. At least in the former case you're free.

SacredHeartAttack ,
@SacredHeartAttack@lemmy.world avatar

I see you missed my point.

FaceDeer ,
@FaceDeer@fedia.io avatar

Of course, because music belongs to the Record Labels. How dare it be made without their consent (and a cut being paid).

Even_Adder , (edited )

Music copyright is such a shitshow. It doesn't surprise that they would try this.

Edit: I just heard the generated songs that are part of the lawsuit. They're pretty fucked if this is true,

LodeMike ,

Links maybe?

nave , (edited )
@nave@lemmy.ca avatar

https://suno.com/song/16df3d1e-f817-4904-b9a8-eb6b18b6583d

https://suno.com/song/a9575656-5922-44fe-a925-b7582af7f8e4

https://suno.com/song/3b1f21b8-c56f-43fd-a858-6d70f0314b67

https://suno.com/song/a5d096df-98f7-4ba8-993b-b1696134e4c3

https://suno.com/song/b13bc2e2-5468-4b5c-b17f-44d23bdf9340

From this article

Edit: there’s even more examples in this article

Stopthatgirl7 OP ,
@Stopthatgirl7@lemmy.world avatar

…oh my GOD, they are cooked.

GreatDong3000 ,

Goodness gracious they must have great balls of fire to have done this.

But what if it was trained on covers?

EatATaco ,

Did those people just put the lyrics in? I've used udio a bunch, but not suno, but I just did it here and I and to generate the lyrics first. I could have put anything i want in there.

But even with that, at least the maria Carey one is really bad.

FireTower ,
@FireTower@lemmy.world avatar

I feel bad for Suno's lawyer.

Fuzzypyro ,

Jesus Christ. Have people never heard of covers? Every song here is in some way or another akin to a published cover of another song. Pretty bad ones at that. Obviously if it were matching the songs one for one, then it would be considered copywrite enforceable but realistically these would be more along the lines of copywrite abuse. The music labels would absolutely love for this precedent to be set so that anything even that remotely resembles anything ever made will allow them to own new independent artists within established genres.

The cases

Here is a list of cases that set precedent. The thing that connects them all and makes them relevant is that the defendant was either successful, made a lot of money, was very popular or it was the label attacking a artist for sounding like themself after leaving the band. See John Fogerty v. John Fogerty

SlothMama ,

Actually technically covers require royalties, whether they're on a CD, or performed at someplace seedy.

They're not the time honored tradition you think they are.

Even_Adder ,

Here's one. Did they overfit their model and think they could block the bad prompts?

LodeMike ,

Seems that way

sunzu , (edited )

I can't tell which one is a shittier actor here...

Eitherway, this is not good for end consumer lol

We always get fucked

grue , (edited )

I hate to say it, but I kinda hope the music copyright cartel wins this one, only for the precedent it would set about things like proprietary use of MS Copilot output being an infringement of GPL-licensed code.

sunzu ,

I don't know which one is better tbh

the devil you know or the one you don't!

grue ,

Having all AI-generated code be either "viral" copyleft or illegal to use at all would certainly be better than allowing massive laundering of GPL-licensed code for exploitation in proprietary software.

sunzu ,

Damn i see your point here tbh...

i am vaguely familiar with software licensing is GPL type of open source?

grue ,

i am vaguely familiar with software licensing is GPL type of open source?

You could say that, LOL. It's the OG of "copyleft" licenses (the guy that made it invented the concept), although "permissive" licenses (BSD, MIT) existed before.

"Copyleft" and "permissive" are the two major categories of Free Software (a.k.a. "open source", although that term has different connotations) license. The difference between them is that "copyleft" requires future modifications by people other than the copyright holders to be released under the same terms, while "permissive" does not. In other words, "copyleft" protects the freedom of future users to control their computer by being able to modify the software on it, while "permissive" maximizes the freedom of other developers to do whatever they want with the code (including using it in proprietary apps, to exploit people).

See also: https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.en.html

realitista ,
@realitista@lemmy.world avatar

If they are using GPL code, shouldn't they also release their source code?

grue ,

That's the argument I would be making, but it certainly isn't Microsoft's (Copilot), OpenAI's (Codex), etc's position: they think the output is sufficiently laundered from the GPL training data so as not to constitute a derivative work (which means none of the original licenses -- "open source" or otherwise -- would apply, and the recipient could do whatever they want).

Edit: actually, to be more clear, I would take either of two positions:

  1. That the presence of GPL (or in general, copyleft) code in the training dataset requires all output to be GPL (or in general, copyleft).

  2. That the presence of both GPL code and code under incompatible licenses in the training dataset means that the AI output cannot legally be used at all.

(Position #2 seems more likely, as the license for proprietary code would be violated, too. It's just that I don't care about that; I only care about protecting the copyleft parts.)

avidamoeba ,
@avidamoeba@lemmy.ca avatar

Yeah, as someone who's fought against the RIAA/MPAA copyright lobbying in my country, I think I'm on their side on this one.

ZILtoid1991 ,

GPL code is the least concern, you can always just say the AI-generated code is GPL. What about training on leaked proprietary code? The training data already known to include medical records, CSAM, etc., wouldn't be surprised if it also contained proprietary code.

breadsmasher ,
@breadsmasher@lemmy.world avatar

Our technology is transformative; it is designed to generate completely new outputs, not to memorize and regurgitate pre-existing content

Oops! You appear to have consumed and believed your own shit you’re peddling

thanks_shakey_snake ,

"Completely new"

Okay, then don't train it on anything at all and let's see how it turns out.

can ,

I wish we could hear music made by people who've never heard it before

riskable ,
@riskable@programming.dev avatar

To be fair, is as "new" as what the major record labels put out!

MysticKetchup ,

https://lemmy.world/pictrs/image/71e1e108-b17e-4c59-857a-2ec797bc46bf.gif

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