A group of record companies has filed lawsuits against Suno, Inc. and Uncharted Labs, Inc. in an attempt to stop the unlicensed use of copyrighted music to train generative artificial intelligence models.
Suno develops Suno AI, a generative AI program used to create music. Uncharted Labs develops Udio AI, a generative AI program that produces music using text prompts. The record companies filed their lawsuit against Suno in the U.S. District Court for the District of Massachusetts. The lawsuit against Uncharted Labs was filed in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York. The 11 record companies involved in the two suits hold the exclusive rights to music used by both Suno and Uncharted Labs, allegedly, to train the AI programs. Suno is valued at approximately $500 million and charges users up to $24 per month. Uncharted Labs charges users up to $30 per month to access Udio AI.
The complaint against Suno states that Suno trained its AI program by “copying decades worth of the world’s most popular sound recordings and then ingesting those copies into Suno’s AI model so it can generate outputs that imitate the qualities of genuine sound recordings.” Suno has not publicly disclosed the materials used to train Suno AI, but the complaint states that “to answer that question honestly would be to admit willful copyright infringement on an almost unimaginable scale.”
The complaint against Uncharted Labs makes similar claims. “Udio copied Plaintiffs’ copyrighted sound recordings en masse and ingested them into its AI model.” The complaint states that “Udio dispelled [any doubt regarding unauthorized copying] by effectively conceding in pre-litigation correspondence that it copied Plaintiffs’ copyrighted sound recordings.” Udio purportedly claimed that its use of copyrighted sound recordings fell under the fair use defense.
Both complaints state that the record companies tested Suno AI and Udio AI “using a series of prompts that pinpoint a particular sound recording by referencing specific subject matter, genre, artist, instruments, vocal style, and the like.” These tests “repeatedly generated outputs that closely matched the targeted copyrighted sound recording, which means that [the AI programs] copied those copyrighted sound recordings to include in its training data.”
The complaints both argue that Suno and Uncharted Labs cannot claim fair use. Rather, the record companies argue that the generative AI companies are racing to become the dominant AI music generation service “by trampling the rights of copyright owners.” Each complaint engages in a fair use analysis that suggests all four factors weigh against fair use.
Both complaints cite causes of action for direct copyright infringement of post-1972 copyrighted recordings and direct copyright infringement of pre-1972 copyrighted recordings. The complaints seek relief in the form of declaratory relief, equitable relief, statutory damages, awards of costs and disbursements, pre-judgment and post-judgment interest, and any other relief deemed just and proper by the court.
Additional Reading
US Record Labels Sue AI Music Generators Suno and Udio for Copyright Infringement, Wired (Jun 24, 2024)
Record Companies Bring Landmark Cases for Responsible AI Against Suno and Udio in Boston and New York Federal Courts, Respectively, RIAA (June 24, 2024
UMG Recordings, Inc. et al v. Suno, Inc. et al (Case No. 1:2024cv11611)
Complaint in UMG Recordings, Inc. et al v. Suno, Inc. et al
UMG Recordings, Inc. et al v. Uncharted Labs, Inc. et al (Case No. 1:2024cv04777)
Complaint in UMG Recordings, Inc. et al v. Uncharted Labs, Inc. et al
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