The world’s largest record company is suing two US-based artificial intelligence (AI) startups for copyright infringement on an “almost unimaginable scale”, the BBC reports.
Suno and Udio are accused of stealing music and “spitting out” very similar songs, and are currently being sued for $150,000 in damages per song.
“The motivation is blatantly commercial and threatens to take away the true human artistry that is at the heart of copyright protection,” the record companies say in the lawsuit, which was announced Monday by the Recording Industry Association of America.
AI companies have previously argued that their unlicensed use of creative works is justified under the “fair use” doctrine, which allows copyrighted material to be used for academic research, artistic advancement and other non-commercial purposes.
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For example, Udio says its system is “explicitly designed to create music that reflects new musical ideas,” and the company claims it has “implemented and continues to refine state-of-the-art filters to ensure our models do not reproduce copyrighted works or the voices of artists.”
But record companies claim that the AI companies are simply copying songs to make money.
“Its use here is far from transformative, as it has no functional purpose…” [the] “The AI model should ingest copyrighted recordings rather than spit out new competing music files,” the filing states.
The lawsuit follows an open letter signed by hundreds of artists calling on tech companies to stop developing AI music-generation tools that “detract from and replace the human artistry of songwriters and artists, and deny us fair compensation for our work.” The letter was signed by big names including Billie Eilish, Nicki Minaj and Katy Perry.
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