AI startup argues that deleting every song online is ‘good use’

When many technology companies are challenged with a lawsuit, the expected defense is to deny wrongdoing. Providing a reasonable explanation as to why the business’ actions do not violate any laws. Music AI startups Udio and Suno took a different approach: admit to doing what you were accused of.

Udio and Suno were sued in June, with music labels Universal Music Group, Warner Music Group and Sony Music Group claiming they trained their AI models by extracting copyrighted material from the internet. In a statement filed with the court today, Suno admitted that its neural networks are actually creating copyrighted material: “It is no secret that the tens of millions of recordings trained by Suno’s model may include recordings whose rights are held by the plaintiffs in this case. .” And that’s because its training data “consists of basically all audio-quality music files accessible on the open Internet,” potentially including millions of illegal copies of songs.

But the company takes the line that its scrubs fall under the umbrella of fair use. “It is fair use under copyright law to make a copy of a protected work as part of a reverse technical process, invisible to the public, in the service of creating a new non-infringing product,” the statement read. The contradiction seems to be that since the tracks generated by the AI ​​that creates them do not include samples, illegally obtaining all those tracks to train an AI model is not a problem.

Calling the defendants’ actions “evasive and misleading,” the RIAA, which initiated the lawsuit, had an incredibly harsh response to the filing. “A breach of their industry standard does not qualify as ‘fair use’. There is no justice in stealing an artist’s life’s work, stripping it of its intrinsic value, and repackaging it to directly compete with the original,” said a spokesperson for the agency. “The defendants had a legitimate way to bring their products and tools to market – they obtained permission before using their work, as many of their competitors have. That unfair competition is at issue in these cases.”

Whatever the next phase of this trial is, get your popcorn ready. It should be wild.