Suno an AI music startup claims that copyrighted music is ‘fair use’ for model Training

Following a lawsuit by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) against the music generation startups Udio and Suno, Suno admitted on Thursday in a court filing that it had used copyrighted songs to train its AI model. Suno, however, argued that this practice falls under the fair-use doctrine.

The RIAA’s lawsuit, filed on June 24, accuses Udio and Suno of training their models with copyrighted music without permission. While Suno’s investors had previously hinted at this lack of authorization, the court filing confirmed it explicitly: “It is no secret that the tens of millions of recordings that Suno’s model was trained on presumably included recordings whose rights are owned by the Plaintiffs in this case,” the filing states.

On the same day as the filing, Suno CEO and co-founder Mikey Shulman addressed the issue in a blog post.He clarified, saying, “We use medium- and high-quality music that is freely available online to train our models. Indeed, a sizable chunk of the public internet It is true that a large portion of the open internet is home to copyrighted content, some of which is held by well-known record companies.” Learning is not infringement, according to Shulman, who compared the process of training an AI model to a “child writing their own rock songs after listening to the genre.” It is not today, and it never has been.”

It’s a significant admission of information they spent months trying to conceal and acknowledged only when compelled by a lawsuit, the RIAA replied furiously. “Fair use” does not apply to their industrial scale infringement. Stealing an artist’s life’s work, removing its essential elements, and then repackaging it to take on the originals head-to-head is unfair. It appears that in their “future of music,” fans will no longer be able to appreciate the music of their favorite artists as they are unable to support themselves.

The notion of fair use is inherently complex, but AI model training introduces new dimensions that may not be covered by existing legal frameworks. The outcome of this case, still in its early stages, is likely to set a significant precedent that could influence more than just the two startups involved.