The Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) has filed lawsuits against AI music generators Udio and Suno, alleging copyright infringement. The lawsuits, backed by major labels including Sony Music Entertainment, Universal Music Group Recordings and Warner Records, claim the AI companies' software uses copyrighted music to generate similar works, seeking compensation of $150,000 per work . This legal action highlights the ongoing conflict between the music industry and generative AI companies over the unauthorized use of copyrighted material.
According to reports, the models of Udio and Suno are trained on copyrighted music without obtaining the necessary permissions. Udio CEO and co-founder David Ding has admitted that the company uses “high-quality, publicly available music” obtained from the Internet for training, which forms the basis of the plaintiffs' argument that the results by Udio are works derived from copyrighted recordings. . For example, Udio generated a song titled “Sunshine Melody”, which is very similar to the copyrighted song “My Girl” by The Temptations. The plaintiffs have provided transcriptions of the musical scores to demonstrate similarities in melody, chords and backing vocals, bolstering the argument that Udio's outputs are not simply inspired by the original recordings, but directly copied .
The lawsuit also reveals that users of Udio's service could generate outputs with vocal replicas of specific artists by entering genre-based cues and descriptors of copyrighted recordings from online music databases. This further supports the argument that their models are using copyrighted material without permission.
At the heart of this case is the fair use debate. The plaintiffs argue that these AI products are designed for commercial profit and compete directly with the original works, undermining existing and potential sales, distribution and licensing markets for the original recordings. They also argue that, unlike Google Books, which did not create substitutes for original works and did not harm the market, Udio and Suno's outputs directly infringe on the market for original music.
The artist community generally supports the lawsuit, seeing it as a necessary step to protect their rights and interests. Most independent artists and labels don't have the resources to challenge VC-backed AI companies, so they rely on major labels to set clear legal precedents. The outcome of this case could shape the landscape of AI-generated content and copyright law for years to come, determining whether creativity remains a human endeavor or becomes a commodity produced by trained machines. stolen work
English 
Español de Venezuela