Suno CEO accuses major labels of ‘reverting to their old lawyer-led playbook’ following lawsuit for copyright infringement

Suno, a developer of AI-powered music generation tools, has fired back after being sued by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) on behalf of major record labels for alleged mass infringement of copyrighted sound recordings.

Suno CEO Mikey Shulman has issued a statement, accusing the plaintiffs of resorting to outdated legal tactics.

“Suno’s mission is to make it possible for everyone to make music. Our technology is transformative; it is designed to generate completely new outputs, not to memorize and regurgitate pre-existing content. That is why we don’t allow user prompts that reference specific artists,” Shulman said in a statement obtained by MBW.

“We would have been happy to explain this to the corporate record labels that filed this lawsuit (and in fact, we tried to do so), but instead of entertaining a good faith discussion, they’ve reverted to their old lawyer-led playbook. Suno is built for new music, new uses, and new musicians. We prize originality,” the executive added.

“We would have been happy to explain this to the corporate record labels that filed this lawsuit (and in fact, we tried to do so), but instead of entertaining a good faith discussion, they’ve reverted to their old lawyer-led playbook.”

Mikey Shulman, Suno

The lawsuits filed against Suno and another AI company, Udio, claim “mass infringement of copyrighted sound recordings copied and exploited without permission by two multi-million-dollar music generation services.”

Sony Music Entertainment, Universal Music Group’s UMG Recordings, and Warner Records Inc. are among the plaintiffs in the two lawsuits filed in the US District Court for the District of Massachusetts against Suno and in the US District Court for the Southern District of New York against Udio on Monday (June 24).

The complaints asserted that AI companies must adhere to laws protecting “human creativity and ingenuity,” according to the court filings. “There is nothing that exempts AI technology from copyright law or that excuses AI companies from playing by the rules.”

The core issue in these lawsuits is whether using copyrighted materials to train AI constitutes copyright infringement. US courts have not yet ruled definitively on this matter.

Following Shulman’s statement, the RIAA responded saying, “Suno continues to dodge the basic question: what sound recordings have they illegally copied?”

“Suno refuses to address the fact that its service has literally been caught on tape – as part of the evidence in this case – doing what Mr. Shulman says his company doesn’t do: memorizing and regurgitating the art made by humans.”

RIAA

“In an apparent attempt to deceive working artists, rightsholders, and the media about its technology, Suno refuses to address the fact that its service has literally been caught on tape – as part of the evidence in this case – doing what Mr. Shulman says his company doesn’t do: memorizing and regurgitating the art made by humans.”

“Winners of the streaming era worked cooperatively with artists and rightsholders to properly license music. The losers did exactly what Suno and Udio are doing now,” the RIAA added.

The development comes as Suno recently attracted USD $125 million from investors including venture capital firm Lightspeed Venture Partners, VC fund Founder Collective, Nat Friedman, former CEO of Github, and his colleague, Daniel Gross.

The lawsuits highlight the ongoing tension between promoting innovation in AI music creation and protecting artists’ rights over copyrighted works. In October, Universal Music Group, Concord and ABKCO sued Amazon-backed Anthropic over its chatbot Claude which is accused of ripping off copyrighted lyrics and passing them off as original, while in the UK, the country’s recorded music industry group, BPI, took legal action in March against vocal cloning service Jammable, formerly known as Voicify.ai, for enabling “deepfakes” of musical artists like Adele, Ed Sheeran, Ariana Grande, Taylor Swift and more.

The latest lawsuits also come amid the emergence of AI companies that train models using artists’ voices and existing music. Sony Music Group in May issued letters to 700 AI developers and music streaming services, notifying them that the company is “opting out” having their music used to train AI models.

Music Business Worldwide