In June, controversial AI music startups Suno and Udio were sued by the major record companies for allegedly training their systems using the majors’ recordings without permission.
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.
Suno, for example, explained 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.”
Both Suno and Udio argued, however, that their use of copyrighted materials – owned by Sony Music Group, Universal Music Group and Warner Music Group – falls under the “fair use” exemption to US copyright law.
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.
“After months of evading and misleading, defendants have finally admitted their massive unlicensed copying of artists’ recordings. It’s a major concession of facts they spent months trying to hide and acknowledged only when forced by a lawsuit,” said an RIAA spokesperson.
“Their industrial scale infringement does not qualify as ‘fair use’. There’s nothing fair about stealing an artist’s life’s 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.”
Suno and Udio argued that their use of the material falls with “fair use” exemptions, and accused the recording companies of launching the lawsuits to prevent competition.
“What the major record labels really don’t want is competition,” states Suno’s response, which was filed in the US District Court for the District of Massachusetts, and can be read in full here.
“Where Suno sees musicians, teachers, and everyday people using a new tool to create original music, the labels see a threat to their market share.”
The lawsuits are an “attempt to misuse IP rights to shield incumbents from competition and reduce the universe of people who are equipped to create new expression,” the Suno response added.
Udio’s response was filed in the US District Court for the Southern District of New York, and can be read in full here.
RIAA’s spokesperson added that Suno and Udio “had a ready lawful path to bring their products and tools to the market – obtain consent before using their work, as many of their competitors already have. That unfair competition is directly at issue in these cases.
“Their vision of the ‘future of music’ is apparently one in which fans will no longer enjoy music by their favorite artists because those artists can no longer earn a living.”
“After months of evading and misleading, defendants have finally admitted their massive unlicensed copying of artists’ recordings.”
RIAA spokesperson
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 ‘unrepresentative of what real people do with Suno,’ ‘a flagrant violation of the rules governing use of the platform,’ and that instead they ‘encourage originality.’
“But if this is true, then why, in this presentation to venture capitalists, is Suno’s co-founder caught on video using ‘Hendrix’ as a prompt in his own use of his platform to demonstrate its capabilities?””
Both Suno and Udio’s responses were filed on behalf of the AI companies by lawyers from Latham & Watkins LLP, the same law firm that is defending Spotify in the lawsuit filed against it by The Mechanical Licensing Collective, over Spotify’s decision to reduce mechanical royalties paid in the US as it now considers its Premium paid music subscriptions to be “bundles” with audiobooks.
Both the Suno and Udio lawsuits share a lot of the same language, and make similar arguments.
They argue that AI music generators like Suno and Udio make “intermediate” copies that are “never seen or heard by anyone,” and that courts have previously ruled that such intermediate copies fall under fair use.
They cite precedents that include a ruling that it’s legal to make thumbnails of copyrighted photos in order to create image-search engines, and that it’s legal to to ingest student papers into plagiarism tools.
“Let there be no doubt: the outputs here are, as a rule, non-infringing,” the Suno response states.
While there have been previous copyright lawsuits against AI developers by music publishers, authors, and news organizations, the lawsuits against Suno and Udio are believed to be the first launched by recorded music rights holders.
In lawsuits filed in late June, recording companies Sony Music Entertainment, UMG Recordings and Warner Records, among others, presented evidence that both Suno and Udio had generated material that was, in some instances, almost identical to copyrighted tracks such as Michael Buble’s Sway and Chuck Berry’s Johnny B. Goode.
“What the major record labels really don’t want is competition.”
Suno, in a response to a copyright lawsuit filed by recording companies
In their responses, the AI companies alleged that the record companies had violated the AI generators’ terms of service, and also possibly violated the publishing copyrights on those songs, by prompting the tools to create outputs similar to existing songs.
“For example, plaintiffs evidently inputted the full lyrics from the song Johnny B. Goode, along with the prompt, ‘1950s rock and roll, rhythm & blues, 12 bar blues, rockabilly, energetic male vocalist, singer guitarist,’ and found that the output ‘replicates the highly distinctive rhythm of the original’s chorus, and uses the same melodic shape on the phrases ‘go Johnny, go, go’,’ Suno’s response states.
But that doesn’t mean that the version of the song Suno trained on was the recording owned by UMG Recordings, because there are “countless other recordings of the song,” Suno said.
And “when plaintiffs’ lawyers prompted Suno with the lyrics to the musical composition Johnny B. Goode, they… apparently committed prima facie acts of infringement of those third-party publishers’ rights.”
“Let there be no doubt: the outputs here are, as a rule, non-infringing.”
Suno, in a response to a copyright lawsuit filed by recording companies
The responses cited a 1971 change to copyright laws that protected recordings (previously, only published music had been protected under copyright law), but – Suno and Udio claim – created a lot of leeway for record companies to create covers of songs that have similar sounds to the original recordings.
“Interestingly, the very reason this statutory provision exists is because the record labels wanted it,” the Suno response stated.
Both lawsuits suggested the record companies are fighting a losing battle against technological progress.
“When 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 ‘on the ‘human scrap heap’,” the Suno and Udio responses stated.
“When 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 ‘used to replace instrumentalists.’”Music Business Worldwide