In a potentially unprecedented lawsuit, the world’s largest record companies – Sony Music, Universal Music Group, and Warner Records – are suing two AI music-generation startups, Suno and Udio, alleging copyright violations.

The record companies claim that both startups trained their AI algorithms using songs they did not have the rights to.

Music-Generation Platforms Stand Their Ground

Interestingly, a day after the lawsuit, Udio came out with a statement emphasising the importance of using AI. They highlighted several vital use cases, even citing that a musician had used the product after losing the ability to use his hands.

The startup also cited examples of producers who have sampled AI-generated tracks to create hit songs, like ‘BBL Drizzy’, and everyday music lovers have used the technology to express the gamut of human emotions from love to sorrow to joy.

Udio has been clear on its stance about using copyrighted material from the beginning. In an exclusive interview with AIM, Andrew Sanchez, co-founder and COO of Udio, said that the company has invested a significant amount of time in ensuring that their systems do not generate outputs that could infringe anyone’s rights.

Similarly, Suno’s CEO Mikey Shulman defended the technology, stating it creates new content and doesn’t replicate existing music.

Musicians Embrace AI

Several musicians have supported the use of AI. For them, the ability to actualise the creativity of people was hindered by the lack of skillsets and resources. According to them, AI helps eliminate this gap by giving them a medium to make the impossible possible. 

Singer and Udio investor will.i.am, who has long been an evangelist for AI’s musical possibilities, has also said that GenAI is “giving agency to dreamers”.

However, not all artists are on the same page.

A few months ago, over 200 musicians across genres, including Katy Perry, Billie Eilish, and Jon Bon Jovi, signed an open letter urging tech companies to stop using AI that ‘devalues music’ and violates the rights of human artists.

Interestingly, there was a recent study that said 71% of musicians fear AI.

Is There a Need for Copyright?

Should the law acknowledge the work of the programmer or the user of such a program? In the analogue world, this is equivalent to asking whether copyright should be granted to the pen manufacturer versus the writer.

In response to the music publishers’ motion, Anthropic stated that it is “confident that using copyrighted content as training data for a [large language model] is fair use under the law—meaning that it is not infringement at all.”

Similarly, as defendants in several copyright infringement litigation cases, thanks to their AI operations, Microsoft and GitHub are strongly incentivised to continue claiming their actions are not licensable.

What Does the Law Say?

At present, works exclusively created by AI, even if they stem from a human-written text prompt, are not copyright protected.

These AI systems, which include chatbots like ChatGPT and image and music generators, are not legally considered the authors of the content they produce. Their outputs are primarily the result of human-created material.

Currently, firms can copyright their characters, artwork, episodes, music, etc. However, if firms do not own these outputs, they cannot legally restrict how you use a work of art that they do not possess the copyright to. 

Grey Areas Remain

Big tech companies have also had their fair share of copyright issues. As mentioned before, Microsoft, GitHub and Anthropic have their own stances in response to these issues.

The issue of whether ChatGPT and other generative AI technologies have violated copyright by using data sets for training is currently being debated in numerous lawsuits worldwide. However, it’s important to note that these claims are still under debate, with one US court ruling that AI-generated artwork cannot be copyrighted.

Because of copyright concerns, some organisations have taken steps to ban the use of AI-generated art. For instance, Getty Images has banned the upload and sale of illustrations made using AI art tools like DALL-E, Midjourney and Stable Diffusion.

One prominent example is Théâtre D’opéra Spatial, or Space Opera Theater, a painting created by Jason M. Allen using Midjourney. Many artists were unhappy with the fact that it won an annual fine art competition.

Last year, Hollywood authors also went on strike, partly to demand guidelines for how generative AI will be utilised within the industry.

While the strikes were successful in limiting the use of chatbots in movie theatres, AI will continue to be used. Producers and writers agreed that it can be helpful in many parts of filmmaking, including scriptwriting.

Embrace AI, Don’t Fear It

A study done by distributor Ditto Music revealed that approximately 60% of the musicians polled already use AI in some way. The fact that most musicians have had favourable encounters with AI demonstrates the technology’s potential impact on the business.

While there are valid concerns about the use of copyrighted material to train AI systems, the technology also presents immense opportunities for creativity and artistic expression.

The AI genie is out of the bottle – the creative industry would be wise to learn how to make the most of it.

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