Produced by | Author of Huxiu Technology Group | Editor by Yu Yang | Miao Zhengqing's headshot | Visual China On June 24, the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) and major music companies including Universal Music Group (UMG), Sony Music Entertainment and Warner Musi

| Huxiu Technology Group

author | Yu Yang

editor | Miao Zhengqing

header image | Visual China

claims that the works of artists from different genres and eras have been stolen without consent, and that they illegally obtained large amounts of copyrighted music to train their artificial intelligence models.

The lawsuit, led by the Recording Industry Association of America (riaa), targets music rather than text. But like the New York Times lawsuit against OpenAI, they raise a question that could reshape the tech landscape as we know it: whether AI companies can take whatever they want and turn it into valuable data. A billion dollar product and claiming it's fair use?

"This is a critical issue that must be addressed because it spans a variety of different industries," said Paul Fakler, a partner at Mayer Brown who specializes in intellectual property cases.

Why is the music industry suing udio and suno?

suno is an AI startup company located in Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA, focusing on the development of AI music generation software. Dubbed the "chatgpt of music," it generates broadcast-quality music based on simple text prompts and requires no expertise to use. Suno's team consists of machine learning experts who create music and lyrics by combining AI models with OpenAI's ChatGPT.

udio launched just this year and has raised millions of dollars from heavyweights in the tech investing world (Andreessen Horowitz) and the music industry (like will.i.am and Common). Comedian king willonius used udio's platform to create drake's diss track "bbl drizzy," which went viral after producer metro boomin remixed it and released it to the public for anyone to rap on.

Ken Doroshow, chief legal officer of the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), said in a press release, "These are clear cases of copyright infringement involving large-scale unauthorized copying of sound recordings. Suno and Audio are trying to cover up their infringements." Rather than providing a reasonable and legal basis for its services,

riaa said the lawsuit was about "ensuring that copyright continues to inspire human invention and imagination, as it has for centuries." That sounds good, but it boils down to it. , the incentive it refers to is money.

The Recording Industry Association of America (riaa) claims that generative artificial intelligence poses a risk to record labels’ business models. “Rather than licensing copyrighted recordings, potential licensees interested in licensing such recordings for their own purposes could generate AI-like recordings at virtually no cost,” the lawsuit states. Such services could, the lawsuit states, "Flooding the market with 'imitators' and 'sound-alikes', disrupting the existing sample licensing business."

In short, while most AI-generated music cannot completely replace songs created by human artists, music and other creative industries are genuinely concerned that AI content could undermine their ability to make money from their work.

riaa is seeking $150,000 in damages for each infringed work, a figure that could be extremely high given the vast amounts of data typically used to train AI systems. Is

ai using these musical works fairly?

Fair use is a legal defense that allows the use of copyrighted material in the creation of a meaningful new or transformative work.

In the complaint, riaa cited several examples of output generated using suno and udio that sounded like songs from record labels. A song generated by suno called "deep down in louisiana close to new orle" replicates the lyrics and style of Chuck Berry's "johnny b. goode". Another song generated using the prompt "70s pop", "prancing queen", contains lyrics from abba's "dancing queen" - which sounds very much like the band.

This seems convincing, but riaa is not claiming that these specific similar tracks infringe copyright - instead, is claiming that the artificial intelligence company uses copyrighted music as part of its training data, arguing that this behavior is illegal .

The cases against suno and audio were filed in federal court in Boston and in New York respectively.

suno CEO Mikey Shulman said in an emailed statement that the company's technology is "transformative" and aims to In "generating entirely new output rather than memorizing and repeating what already exists". Schulman said suno also doesn't allow users to generate music based on prompts from specific artists.

riaa said that when they accused suno of using copyrighted works, the company avoided talking about it, saying that the training data was "confidential business information." Udio made similar claims in his letter. "Had Suno diligently avoided copying Plaintiffs' recordings and feeding them into its AI models, Suno's services would not have been able to reproduce such a wide range of musical expressions at the quality Suno touts," the complaint reads.

Well, udio and suno use record labels copyrighted work to train their model, is this fair use? Are

udio and suno wronged?

riaa argued that the actions of startups cannot claim fair use, saying that the output of audio and suno was intended to replace real recordings, that they were produced for commercial purposes, and that copying was widespread and It wasn't selective, and in the end, the end product posed a direct threat to the record company's business.

In Fakler’s view, as long as the copyrighted work is only temporarily copied and its defining features are extracted and abstracted into the weights of the AI ​​model, these startups have a strong case for fair use.

"That's how the computer works - it has to make these copies and then the computer analyzes all this data in order to extract the non-copyrighted content," he said. "How do we create songs that listeners understand as music, and have the kinds of characteristics that we see commonly in pop music? It extracts all of these things, just like musicians learn these things by playing music. "

"That's a very strong fair use argument, in my opinion," Fackler said.

Of course, a judge or jury may not agree. If these lawsuits go to court, what is unearthed during the investigation could have a significant impact on the cases. Which music tracks were misappropriated and how they entered the training set may be important, and the details of the training process may weaken the fair use defense of .

This is not the first confrontation between the music industry and artificial intelligence technology companies, and this lawsuit may be an important step in the fierce battle between the music industry and the technology companies that provide AI tools. As the riaa lawsuit and similar lawsuits make their way through the courts, everything from texts and photos to now recordings will face new scrutiny and inform future cases. Fair use issues hang over all of these cases and the AI ​​industry as a whole.