By: Melissa Zhao

The three main U.S. record labels, Universal Music Group, Sony Music Entertainment, and Warner Music Group have united in the fight against music created by Artificial Intelligence. The group has come together to sue two AI music generators, Suno and Udio, for copyright infringement.

The three major labels filed lawsuits on Monday, June 24, against Suno and Udio, both of which had recently released the ability to generate songs using text prompts. The prompts allowed the generators to imitate real artist’s voices, which triggered anger and a downpour of frustrated questions. Lawyers accused Suno of generating songs imitating the voices of Jason Derulo and CashMoneyAP, while Udio could imitate artists Michael Jackson and Lin Manuel Miranda.

Many different artists have expressed their concerns in how AI’s generated songs could take away from the hard work put in by human artists. Though the musical community has started to embrace AI as a part of it, artists are worried about people using AI to copy their voices in different songs, which would undermine the work devoted to the original song, and even hurt the artists’ reputation.

One of the charges in the lawsuit is that the AI companies are copying years and years of hard work to make some of the world’s most popular songs and recordings. In addition, they accuse the AI companies of being intentionally vague on what sources the AI generator modeled. were using to make the sources.

As of now, the major music labels are seeking for more evidence that the two music generators, Suno and Udio, really did violate the copyright laws and copy the sound recordings that were original. They also hope to prevent it from happening in the future again.

Article Link: https://www.nytimes.com/2024/06/25/arts/music/record-labels-ai-lawsuit-sony-universal-warner.html?searchResultPosition=2