Record labels sue AI music generator startups Suno, Udio for copyright infringement

Music labels, including Universal Music Group (UMG), Sony Music Entertainment and Warner Music Group, have banded together to launch a lawsuit against AI music generation companies Suno and Udio for alleged copyright infringement, the most recent in a wave of litigation against the new tech.

Both Suno and Udio let users write text prompts to generate audio clips. 

The lawsuits, filed in New York and Boston in coordination with the Record Industry Association of America (RIAA), claim both companies copied songs and recordings generally without permission from record labels and ultimately distributed similar versions.

In a statement to Wired magazine, Suno CEO Mikey Shulman said:

“Our technology is transformative; it is designed to generate completely new outputs, not to memorize and regurgitate pre-existing content. That is why we don’t allow user prompts that reference specific artists. We would have been happy to explain this to the corporate record labels that filed this lawsuit (and in fact, we tried to do so), but instead of entertaining a good faith discussion, they’ve reverted to their old lawyer-led playbook.”

VentureBeat has reached out to Udio and Suno for additional responses to the claims and will update when we hear back.

Music label accusations against AI audio generators

UMG, Sony, and Atlantic Records — owned by Warner Music Group — claim in their complaint that Suno trained AI models using copyrighted music by downloading a digital version of a song and then generating similar-sounding music.

The labels say Suno generated “29 different outputs that contain the style of Johnny B. Goode,” a song owned by UMG.

The complaint states that when transcribed into sheet music, the generated tracks are eerily similar to the original compositions. 

The labels further claim that Suno replicated the quirks of certain artists, such as singer Jason Derulo, whose trademark is singing his name at the beginning of songs.

The complaint states that Suno is able to reproduce this audio, which the plaintiffs claimed proves its models are trained on copyrighted music.

Record labels made similar allegations against Udio. The filing against Udio also claims that the platform has made it easy for people to distribute samples similar to copyrighted recordings on commercial platforms like Spotify. 

Udio became popular after the producer Metro Boomin used to create an AI beat track he called “BBL Drizzy,” which he distributed for free as part of an ongoing feud with rival musician Drake (Aubrey Graham).

That sample featured vocals, instrumentals and melodies made through Udio, though Metro Boomin claimed he didn’t know the sample was AI-generated.

More AI-generated music platforms are coming up

Platforms such as Suno and Udio have become more popular recently as several companies have started experimenting with advanced AI music generation applications.

Google’s MusicFX composes music from text prompts, Meta’s Audiobox AI replicates ambient sounds, and AI voice company ElevenLabs recently previewed a music-making platform.

Companies like Suno and Udio benefited from this increased interest, with Suno raising $125 million in May. 

The rise of music and voice AI platforms has prompted lawmakers to propose legislation protecting artists’ likenesses from being copied. 

The twin lawsuits against Suno and Udio are not the first time music labels have hit back against AI companies. UMG sued Anthropic for allegedly copying and distributing lyrics to popular songs without permission on its Claude chatbot. Anthropic claimed music lyrics make up a “minuscule fraction” of AI training data and any potential distribution doesn’t impact labels substantially.