All just stolen?

Music association takes AI start-ups to court

The industry association accuses AI start-ups of infringing copyrights when training their software.

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The music industry is taking two start-ups that create songs using artificial intelligence to court. The US industry association RIAA is accusing the companies Suno and Udio of having trained the AI with copyrighted music without permission.

Similar to image generators, Suno and Udio allow you to have the computer create pieces of music using text specifications. This could be, for example: Generate a rock song about a dog walking on the beach with a guitar solo. The software would need just a few seconds to do this.

Such AI programs first have to be trained with large amounts of data. The RIAA accuses the two companies, on behalf of the major music companies, of using their songs for this purpose. According to the statement of claim published on Monday, one of the things it sees as evidence is that music created by the start-ups can sound very similar to copyrighted songs by music stars.

AI companies reject allegations
According to the statement of claim, Udio counters that such use of songs is covered by the fair use clause of copyright law. RIAA sees it differently. Suno CEO Mikey Shulman emphasized in a statement to the financial service Bloomberg that the software should create new music - and not regurgitate old tracks.

There are also conflicts between AI start-ups and some media organizations and writers. They are suing because AI models have been illegally trained with their texts. Other media, such as the Financial Times or newspapers owned by media mogul Rupert Murdoch, grant developer companies such as OpenAI access to their archives to train AI in return for license fees.