Sony Music, Universal Music Group, and Warner Records sued AI music generators Suno and Udio for committing “mass copyright infringement” by using copyrighted recordings to train their systems. The output you can get from Suno and Udio is remarkably akin to real singers.
The music industry giants are at it again, this time throwing a collective hissy fit over AI music generators Suno and Udio. Accusations of “massive copyright infringement” are flying, with the labels demanding up to $150,000 per song allegedly copied. To the sued companies, all this might have just been a daring initiative or a chance to cash in on the AI hype. The music created using these applications is remarkably similar to certain artists, as it’s trained on heaps of data.
Now, the argument that human musicians also learn to create their music by listening to others is fundamentally flawed. Humans are not as capable and fast as AI. A human will possibly never be able to emulate the voice of a major popstar, it’s so unique. But an AI engine can do that easily. Record labels that distribute those songs are finding it difficult to imagine a future where musical AI has become extremely commonplace, being able to create new musical tracks in popstar voices.
At the same time, it’s not 100% right to blame it all on these AI startups trying to innovate and further the boundaries of what’s possible technologically.
The labels see AI as a threat to their profits, a potential disruptor to their carefully constructed empire. So, they’re pulling out the big legal guns, hoping to scare away any upstarts who dare to challenge their dominance.
Whether you side with the record labels on this or with the AI labs reaching uncanny levels of human emulation across creative media, one thing is for sure – AI is here to stay, and it’s only going to get better.
Personally, I think the musicians should have a say here. And the say of the singers whose voices are being cloned the most should outweigh the concerns of record labels. We do need to regulate all this to avoid such lawsuits. It’s entirely possible that such a lawsuit in the future can kill a genius AI lab that would’ve actually contributed to human creativity and society.
