🚨 BREAKING: Major record labels sue AI music program Suno AI for copyright infringement. Important quotes:
"Given that the foundation of its business has been to exploit copyrighted sound recordings without permission, Suno has been deliberately evasive about what exactly it has copied. This is unsurprising. After all, to answer that question honestly would be to admit willful copyright infringement on an almost unimaginable scale. Suno’s executives instead speak publicly in exceedingly general terms. For example, one of Suno’s co-founders posted online that Suno’s service trains on a “mix of proprietary and public data,” while another co-founder stated that Suno’s training practices are “fairly in line with what other people are doing.” Piercing the veil of secrecy, an early investor admitted that “if [Suno] had deals with labels when this company got started, I probably wouldn’t have invested in it. I think that they needed to make this product without the constraints." (page 3)
-
"Plaintiffs could have proceeded with this action based solely on eliciting that reasonable inference of copying. Nevertheless, Plaintiffs’ claims are based on much more. In particular, Plaintiffs tested Suno’s product and generated outputs using a series of prompts that pinpoint a particular sound recording by referencing specific subject matter, genre, artist, instruments, vocal style, and the like. Suno’s service repeatedly generated outputs that closely matched the targeted copyrighted sound recording, which means that Suno copied those copyrighted sound recordings to include in its training data. In addition, the public has observed (and Plaintiffs have confirmed) that even less targeted prompts can cause Suno’s product to generate outputs that resemble specific recording artists and specific copyrighted recordings. Such outputs are clear evidence that Suno trained its model on Plaintiffs’ copyrighted sound recordings." (page 5)
-
"At its core, this case is about ensuring that copyright continues to incentivize human invention and imagination, as it has for centuries. Achieving this end does not require stunting technological innovation, but it does require that Suno adhere to copyright law and respect the creators whose works allow it to function in the first place. Plaintiffs bring this action seeking an injunction and damages commensurate with the scope of Suno’s massive and ongoing infringement. (page 6)
➡ Read the full lawsuit below.
➡ To stay up to date with the latest developments in AI policy, regulation, and lawsuits, subscribe to my newsletter
