AI Music Is a Technologically Sophisticated Form of Plagiarism

An in-depth look at RIAA’s lawsuits against Suno and Udio and why the “fair use”-defense seems out of the question.

Image by Ann H via Pexels

“Too many developers and investors seem to see a zero sum game – where AI behemoths scrape artists’ and songwriters’ life’s work off the internet for free and without any opportunity for individual choice, autonomy, or values. Where most of us see music, art, and culture to be cherished, they see soulless data to copied, “tokenized,” and exploited. Where most of us look to collaborate and reach for new horizons, they prefer to exploit art and culture for their own narrow gains. On the road to society’s AI future, it’s their way or no way.” 

- Mitch Glazier, Chairman and CEO of RIAA (Billboard) 

Introduction 

In a post from May, I addressed some of the legal and ethical challenges pertaining to the AI music services Suno and Udio.    

It’s not a big surprise that both Suno and Udio are now facing major lawsuits from the crop of the world’s leading record labels, including “the Big Three”, Universal Music Group, Sony Music, and Warner Music Group.  

Both lawsuits (find them here) are spearheaded by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) and take aim at how Suno and Udio have trained their models on the record labels copyright-protected music without permission. 

Suno is accused of copying 662 songs and Udio of copying 1,670 songs. The record labels have asked the courts to award statutory damages of up to $150,000 per song.  

Together with the lawsuits, the record labels attached a long list of the copyrighted work that was allegedly used as training data for Suno and Udio respectively - in conjunction with prompts and time stamps in the AI-generated songs that are infringing their copyright.  

The cases have strong merits. Just listen to the Suno-generated Deep down in Louisiana close to New Orle, a near-copy of Chuck Berry’s Johnny B. Goode. Or Prancing Queen a near-copy of ABBA’s Dancing Queen. Or Udio’s replication of “All I Want for Christmas Is You” by Mariah Carey. It’s indeed an impossible argument to make that the AI songs are not substantially similar to the original works.  

RIAA also has a good track record of winning big copyright infringement cases. The organization effectively shut down the once popular but illegal file-sharing platform, Napster, only two years after its launch (a short time in major litigation years).  

Settlements 

The magazine MusicTech suggests that the two lawsuits may end up in settlements. The assumption is based on the growing number of media companies that have made deals with OpenAI and other BigAI companies. Deals, which tech journalist Damon Beres succinctly called "devil’s bargains" in an article for The Atlantic.  

I wrote more about the issue two weeks ago in my post about Perplexity.  The already financially limping media companies are faced with a stark choice: either to accept a bag of money from OpenAI to keep quiet, or to accept that their original work will be used as training data for the tech companies’ AI models regardless, without pay.  

Personally, I don’t see RIAA budging in these cases – unless Suno/Udio agrees to only use licensed music from now on to train their models. This is an unlikely scenario since Suno/Udio could not create the same quality of music if they had to rely on licensed music only.  

Although I can’t predict the future or read the mind of judges, I see this case as too principal for RIAA to settle halfway with a bag of cash and a handshake like the deals between OpenAI and various media companies. The $100-trillion question is (if we believe Sam Altman’s estimate of AI’s potential wealth creation): what kind of implications will a decision favoring RIAA have for the wider generative AI industry?