There’s another twist in the ongoing battle between Suno and the music industry. Universal Music Group and Sony are suing the AI firm over copyright infringement in its new v6 models.
The v6 was launched by the firm two weeks ago. According to Suno it’s faster, more expressive and trained “from scratch” on a new set of data developed with rights-holders that the firm has inked deals with, including Warners and BMG.
“This includes licensed music from Warner. It includes user data, and then it includes all of these learnings and innovations that the team has made,” said Chief Product Officer Jack Brody at the time.
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However, it’s this ‘user data’ that Sony and UMG are concerned about. In their filing they cite over 60,000 recordings that Suno has used in its past training process. “Suno has admitted that it trained v6 using ‘user interactions’ with previous iterations of its models. But these ‘interactions’ are the outputs of, and preference data derived from, Suno’s prior models,” the filing says.
“Suno trained v6 with material that exists only because Suno copied Plaintiffs’ recordings without authorisation. v6 is not a fresh start; it is the fruit of the same poisoned tree. Suno’s development of v6 continued, rather than ended, its unauthorised exploitation of Plaintiffs’ Copyrighted Recordings.”
At the time of writing, Suno has yet to respond to the filing.
Meanwhile, in an entirely separate AI legal kerfuffle, Universal and Warners have asked a court to throw out a case brought against them by the American Federation of Musicians (AFM) over AI licensing.
The AFM is arguing that the two majors licensed their members recordings to Suno and Udio without proper compensation. The case revolves around whether AI licensing constitutes a ‘new use’ of recordings.
Under the ‘new use’ clause of the AFM’s Sound Recording Labor Agreement (SRLA), if a sound recording is used by a record company in a new way that is not anticipated or covered by the agreement, the label have to compensate any musicians who appear on that recording. The AFM is arguing that AI is a new use, whereas the labels are saying it isn’t.
Universal’s briefs have pointed to a pre-motion conference in July at which the US District Judge Edgardo Ramos asked whether an agreement exists between AFM and the labels regarding AI. The union’s counsel, Eyad Asad, admitted in the filing that there wasn’t.
“That concession ends this case,” UMG’s lawyers have written. “Discovery cannot change that fact, much less create the missing agreement. A payment obligation measured by an agreement that does not exist is no payment obligation at all.”
We shall doubtless find out in due course whether Judge Ramos buys their argument.
