Sony and Universal have filed a lawsuit against the AI service Suno for using unlicensed music
- Sony and Universal filed a lawsuit against Suno
- The lawsuit claims that v6 was trained on unlicensed tracks
- Suno announces a complete retraining of the model from scratch
- The case could set a precedent for AI music
Music giants Sony Music and Universal Music Group have filed a new lawsuit against Suno, the developer of an AI-based music generator. According to their statement, the latest version of the model – Suno v6 – uses copyrighted materials for training that were obtained without licenses, including from the video hosting service YouTube and other open sources.
lawsuit
The plaintiffs point out that Suno used a 'distillation' method, where a new model is trained to reproduce the results of previous AI models. These models, according to Sony and Universal, were originally trained on illegally copied recordings. Thus, even if v6 did not use the original tracks directly, it continues to benefit from their unauthorized copies.
In the company's lawsuit, it is emphasized that training the 'new' model on the results of the 'infringing' AI does not eliminate the violations but merely 'launders' them, transferring the value of creative contribution from the original recordings to the compromised models, and then to the final musical generations.
Response from Suno
Suno's Chief Product Officer Jack Brody stated in an interview with The Verge that version v6 was 'trained from scratch on a new dataset' that includes 'user data'. According to him, the company has taken steps to eliminate previous training sets and build the model on a cleaner foundation.
Nevertheless, the plaintiffs believe that even such 'user-generated' data may contain fragments of music obtained without the consent of the rights holders, and therefore continue to violate their rights. In their opinion, only the complete creation of a model without using any unlicensed information can ensure the legality of its operation.
The legal process is taking place against the backdrop of a growing number of disputes related to AI-generated music and images. In recent years, several major labels and publishers have already filed lawsuits against companies offering content generation services, demanding licenses for the underlying data.
Experts note that this case could set a precedent for regulating the use of copyrighted materials in AI training. If the court finds Suno's actions to be illegal, it could push the industry towards stricter licensing of datasets and the development of new legal mechanisms to protect the interests of musicians and rights holders.
Source: 3DNews
