Suno and Udio, two AI music companies, have recently engaged the services of elite law firm Latham & Watkins to address a copyright dispute with major labels in the music industry.
In the face of doubtful copyright infringement of AI-generated pieces by Suno and Udio, major labels like Sony Music, Warner Music Group (WMG), and Universal Music Group (UMG) filed a lawsuit in late June, claiming that those two have copied the labels' sound recordings without permission to train their AI models.
On top of that, the labels argue that this could result in the market being saturated with machine-generated content that directly competes with and devalues their original sound recordings.
Legal Defense Strategy
In response to the allegations, Suno and Udio are likely to play the cards that many AI companies have played- to defend that the training is on the fair use doctrine in copyright law, as it involves the "intermediate" use of millions of works to generate entirely new creations
Latham & Watkins, with its experience in defending top artificial intelligence companies, will likely employ this defense strategy on behalf of Suno and Udio.
The law firm has previously been involved in cases defending companies in the field of artificial intelligence.
For example, Latham represented Anthropic against allegations of infringement made by UMG, Concord Music Group, and ABKCO last October. The firm is also known for representing OpenAI in its various lawsuits, including those filed by authors and other rights owners.
Evidence Supporting Copyright Violations
The major labels have presented circumstantial evidence to support their belief that Suno and Udio have used their copyrighted material without permission. This includes generated songs that bear a striking resemblance to the voices of renowned artists such as Bruce Springsteen, Lin-Manuel Miranda, Michael Jackson, and ABBA.
To date, Suno and Udio have not provided any statement on their utilization of unauthorized copyrights in their datasets.
However, the music industry has started to raise questions about the contents of these datasets after AI music safety nonprofit Fairly Trained published a series of articles written by Ed Newton-Rex. Newton-Rex claimed to have generated music from both Suno and Udio that closely resembled copyrighted works.