Recently, Nandu reporters learned that the world's three major record companies, Universal Music Group, Sony Music Group and Warner Music Group, have launched lawsuits against artificial intelligence music production companies suno and audio, accusing the two companies of illegal use of copyrights. Use music to train your own AI model and provide external services. The record company requested compensation of up to $150,000 for each allegedly infringing song. At present, the two AI music companies have not officially responded to this matter, but Suno executives mentioned in an email to foreign media that their technology is not about memorizing and repeating existing content, and said that these record companies did not have good-faith discussions.
It is understood that suno and audio are the two leading brands in the field of generative AI music. Users only need to enter the corresponding text and prompt words to generate a complete song with extremely high accuracy. The record company said in the lawsuit that users of suno and audio can create works that use the platform's tools to create works that contain elements of certain songs, such as singer Mariah Carey's "All I Want for Chrismas Is You" and James Brown's "All I Want for Chrismas Is You." "i got you (i feel good)" and so on, and can also generate sounds that are very similar to singers such as Michael Jackson and the Swedish band Abba.
In the view of record companies, this music will directly compete with works of human art and cause their value to decrease. They accused the two AI music companies of having obvious commercial purposes and may replace human art with copyright protection as its core in the future. The record giants asked the court to order that the two companies must pay statutory damages, with each allegedly infringing song being calculated at a maximum of US$150,000. Suno and Audio were accused of copying 662 and 1,670 songs respectively. After calculation, the maximum claims the two companies may face are US$99.3 million and US$250 million respectively.
According to foreign media reports, Suno’s CEO Mikey Shulman stated in an email that the technology used by the company is transformative, and its purpose is to create new content, not to repeat existing content, and their tools do not allow The user specifies specific artists to generate songs. When talking about the record company's lawsuit, he said that many record companies did not have good-faith discussions with them, but tried to return to the "old routine" of lawyers leading the matter.
In fact, this is not the first music copyright dispute caused by generative AI in recent times. Last October, music publishers including Universal Music Group Publishing (UMGP), Concord Music Group and ABKCO filed a lawsuit against Anthropic, a startup artificial intelligence company that develops large language models. The lawsuit claims that the company illegally copied and distributed a large number of copyrighted music works, including lyrics, during the process of building large models. Multiple publishers demanded compensation of 140,000 euros for each infringing work.
In recent years, with the rapid development of artificial intelligence technology, ai music generation technology has gradually matured, and many start-up companies have set foot in this field. However, how to balance the relationship between technological innovation and copyright protection has become the focus of attention both inside and outside the industry. Industry insiders said that this lawsuit may trigger a series of legal and ethical discussions about AI technology and copyright protection. AI music companies have made significant progress in technology, but how to operate within the legal framework will be a question these companies must think about in the future.
Written by: Nandu reporter Xu Bingqian
