Suno Faces Legal Battle Over AI Training Practices
In the midst of a legal showdown with the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), AI music startup Suno has openly admitted to training its AI model using copyrighted music. However, the company argues that this practice falls under the fair use doctrine, sparking a debate that could have far-reaching implications for the music industry and AI technology.
The Lawsuit
The RIAA filed a lawsuit on June 24 against Suno and another music generation startup, Udio, alleging that both companies trained their AI models on copyrighted material without permission from the music labels. While Suno’s investors had previously suggested the company did not have explicit authorization to use these copyrighted tracks, Thursday’s court filing marked the first direct acknowledgment of this fact.
“It is no secret that the tens of millions of recordings that Suno’s model was trained on presumably included recordings whose rights are owned by the Plaintiffs in this case,” the filing stated.
Suno’s Defense
In a blog post published the same day as the legal filing, Suno CEO and co-founder Mikey Shulman defended the company’s practices. “We train our models on medium- and high-quality music we can find on the open internet… Much of the open internet indeed contains copyrighted materials, and some of it is owned by major record labels,” Shulman wrote.
He further argued that training AI models on existing music is akin to how a musician might learn to write their own songs by listening to a genre. “Learning is not infringing. It never has been, and it is not now,” Shulman added.
RIAA’s Response
The RIAA quickly responded, criticizing Suno’s defense as a belated and insufficient acknowledgment of wrongdoing. “It’s a major concession of facts they spent months trying to hide and acknowledged only when forced by a lawsuit. 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,” the RIAA said in a statement.
The Bigger Picture
The dispute over what constitutes fair use in the context of AI model training is far from simple. As this case unfolds, it is expected to set a critical precedent that could impact not just Suno and Udio, but the broader AI and creative industries. With AI’s role in content creation growing rapidly, the outcome of this legal battle could define the future boundaries of fair use and copyright law in the digital age.
This case remains in its early stages, but the implications of the court’s decision will likely resonate across industries that are increasingly intertwined with AI technology.
