AI

The RIAA’s lawsuit against generative music startups will be the bloodbath AI needs

Comment

Wooden gavel with brass engraving band and golden alphabets AI on a round wood sound block. Illustration of the concept of legislation of artificial intelligence act and rules
Image Credits: Dragon Claws (opens in a new window) / Getty Images

Like many AI companies, music generation startups Udio and Suno appear to have relied on unauthorized scrapes of copyrighted works in order to train their models. This is by their own and investors’ admission, as well as according to new lawsuits filed against them by music companies. If these suits go before a jury, the trial could be both a damaging exposé and a highly useful precedent for similarly sticky-fingered AI companies facing certain legal peril.

The lawsuits, filed by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), put us all in the uncomfortable position of rooting for the RIAA, which for decades has been the bogeyman of digital media. I myself have received nastygrams from them! The case is simply that clear.

The gist of the two lawsuits, which are extremely similar in content, is that Suno and Udio (strictly speaking, Uncharted Labs doing business as Udio) indiscriminately pillaged more or less the entire history of recorded music to form datasets, which they then used to train a music-generating AI.

And here let us quickly note that these AIs don’t “generate” so much as match the user’s prompt to patterns from their training data and then attempt to complete that pattern. In a way, all these models do is perform covers or mashups of the songs they ingested.

That Suno and Udio did ingest said copyrighted data seems, for all intents and purposes (including legal ones), very likely. The companies’ leadership and investors have been unwisely loose-lipped about the copyright challenges of the space.

They have admitted that the only way to create a good music generation model is to ingest a large amount of high-quality music. It is very simply a necessary step for creating machine learning models of this type.

Then they said that they did so without the permission of music labels. Investor Antonio Rodriguez of Matrix Partners told Rolling Stone just a few months ago:

Honestly, if we had deals with labels when this company got started, I probably wouldn’t have invested in it. I think that they needed to make this product without the constraints.

The companies told the RIAA’s lawyers that they believe the media it has ingested falls under fair-use doctrine — which fundamentally only comes into play in the unauthorized use of a work. Now, fair use is admittedly a complex and hazy concept in idea and execution, but the companies’ use does appear to stray somewhat outside the intended safe harbor of, say, a seventh grader using a Pearl Jam song in the background of their video on global warming.

To be blunt, it looks like these companies’ goose is cooked. They might have hoped that they could take a page from OpenAI’s playbook, using evasive language and misdirection to stall their less deep-pocketed critics, like authors and journalists. (If by the time AI companies’ skulduggery is revealed and they’re the only option for distribution, it no longer matters.)

But it’s harder to pull off when there’s a smoking gun in your hand. And unfortunately for Udio and Suno, the RIAA says in its lawsuit that it has a few thousand smoking guns and that songs it owns are clearly being regurgitated by the music models. Its claim: that whether Jackson 5 or Maroon 5, the “generated” songs are lightly garbled versions of the originals — something that would be impossible if the original were not included in the training data.

The nature of LLMs — specifically, their tendency to hallucinate and lose the plot the more they write — precludes regurgitation of, for example, entire books. This has likely mooted a lawsuit by authors against OpenAI, since the latter can plausibly claim the snippets its model does quote were grabbed from reviews, first pages available online and so on. (The latest goalpost move is that they did use copyright works early on but have since stopped, which is funny because it’s like saying you only juiced the orange once but have since stopped.)

What you can’t do is plausibly claim that your music generator only heard a few bars of “Great Balls of Fire” and somehow managed to spit out the rest word for word and chord for chord. Any judge or jury would laugh in your face, and with luck a court artist will have their chance at illustrating that.

This is not only intuitively obvious but legally consequential as well, as the re-creation of entire works (garbled, but quite obviously based on the originals) opens up a new avenue for relief. If the RIAA can convince the judge that Udio and Suno are doing real and major harm to the business of the copyright holders and artists, it can ask the court to shut down the AI companies’ whole operation at the outset of the trial with an injunction.

Opening paragraphs of your book coming out of an LLM? That’s an intellectual issue to be discussed at length. Dollar-store “Call Me Maybe” generated on demand? Shut it down. I’m not saying it’s right, but it’s likely.

The predictable response from the companies has been that the system is not intended to replicate copyrighted works: a desperate, naked attempt to offload liability onto users under Section 230 safe harbor. That is, the same way Instagram isn’t liable if you use a copyrighted song to back your Reel. Here, the argument seems unlikely to gain traction, partly because of the aforementioned admissions that the company itself ignored copyright to begin with.

What will be the consequence of these lawsuits? As with all things AI, it’s quite impossible to say ahead of time, since there is little in the way of precedent or applicable, settled doctrine.

My prediction is that the companies will be forced to expose their training data and methods, these things being of clear evidentiary interest. And if this evidence shows that they are indeed misusing copyrighted material, we’ll see an attempt to settle or avoid trial, and/or a speedy judgment against Udio and Suno. It’s likely that at least one of the two will attempt to continue onward, using legal (or at least legal-adjacent) sources of music, but the resulting model would (by their own standards for training data) almost certainly result in a huge step down in quality, and users would flee.

Investors? Ideally, they’ll lose their shirts, having placed their bets on something that was in all likelihood illegal and certainly unethical, and not just in the eyes of nebbish author associations but according to the legal minds at the infamously and ruthlessly litigious RIAA.

The consequences may be far-reaching: If investors in a hot new generative media startup suddenly see a hundred million dollars vaporized due to the fundamental nature of generative media, suddenly a different level of diligence will seem appropriate.

Companies may learn from the trial or settlement documents what can be said — or perhaps more importantly, what should not be said — to avoid liability and keep copyright holders guessing.

Though this particular suit seems almost a foregone conclusion, it will not be a playbook to prosecuting or squeezing settlements out of other generative AI companies but an object lesson in hubris.

It’s good to have one of those every once in a while, even if the teacher happens to be the RIAA.

More TechCrunch

Ola Electric, India’s largest electric two-wheeler maker, saw its shares rise as much as 20% on its public debut on Friday, making it the biggest listing among Indian firms in…

Ola Electric surges in India’s biggest listing in two years

Rocket Lab surpassed $100 million in quarterly revenue for the first time, a 71% increase from the same quarter of last year. This is just one of several shiny accomplishments…

Rocket Lab’s sunny outlook bodes well for future constellation plans 

In 1996, two companies, Patersons HR and Payroll Solutions, formed a venture called CloudPay to provide payroll and payments services to enterprise clients. CloudPay grew quietly over the next several…

CloudPay, a payroll services provider, lands $120M in new funding

The vulnerabilities allowed one security researcher to peek inside the leak sites without having to log in.

Security bugs in ransomware leak sites helped save six companies from paying hefty ransoms

Featured Article

A comprehensive list of 2024 tech layoffs

The tech layoff wave is still going strong in 2024. Following significant workforce reductions in 2022 and 2023, this year has already seen 60,000 job cuts across 254 companies, according to independent layoffs tracker Layoffs.fyi. Companies like Tesla, Amazon, Google, TikTok, Snap and Microsoft have conducted sizable layoffs in the…

A comprehensive list of 2024 tech layoffs

A new “beta rabbit” mode adds some conversational AI chops to the Rabbit r1, particularly in more complex or multi-step instructions.

Rabbit’s r1 refines chats and timers, but its app-using ‘action model’ is still MIA

Los Angeles is notorious for its back-to-back traffic. Three events that promise to bring in millions of spectators from around the world — the 2026 World Cup, the Super Bowl…

Archer to set up air taxi network in LA by 2026 ahead of World Cup

Featured Article

Amazon is fumbling in India

Amazon’s decision to overlook quick-commerce in India is now looking like a significant misstep.

Amazon is fumbling in India

OpenAI’s GPT-4o, the generative AI model that powers the recently launched alpha of Advanced Voice Mode in ChatGPT, is the company’s first trained on voice as well as text and…

OpenAI finds that GPT-4o does some truly bizarre stuff sometimes

On Thursday, Box filled in a missing piece on its AI platform when it bought automated metadata extracting startup, Alphamoon.

Box adds crucial piece to its AI platform with Alphamoon acquisition

OpenAI has announced a new appointment to its board of directors: Zico Kolter. Kolter, a professor and director of the machine learning department at Carnegie Mellon, predominantly focuses his research…

OpenAI adds a Carnegie Mellon professor to its board of directors

Count Spotify and Epic Games among the Apple critics who are not happy with the iPhone maker’s newly revised compliance plan for the European Union’s Digital Markets Act (DMA). Shortly…

Spotify and Epic Games call Apple’s revised DMA compliance plan ‘confusing,’ ‘illegal’ and ‘unacceptable’

Thursday seeks to shake up conventional online dating in a crowded market. The app, which recently expanded to San Francisco, fosters intentional dating by restricting user access to Thursdays. At…

Thursday, the dating app that you can use only on Thursdays, expands to San Francisco

AI companies are gobbling up investor money and securing sky-high valuations early in their life cycle. This dynamic has many calling the AI industry a bubble. Nick Frosst, a co-founder…

Cohere co-founder Nick Frosst thinks everyone needs to be more realistic about what AI can and cannot do

Instagram is rolling out the ability for users to add up to 20 photos or videos to their feed carousels, as the platform embraces the trend of “photo dumps.” Back…

Instagram is embracing the ‘photo dump’

Welcome back to TechCrunch Mobility — your central hub for news and insights on the future of transportation. Sign up here for free — just click TechCrunch Mobility! Anyone paying…

Lyft ‘opens a can of whoop ass’ on surge pricing, Tesla’s Dojo explained and Saudi Arabia pumps $1.5B into Lucid

Flint Capital just closed its third fund at $160 million. Its has a unique strategy for finding its limited partner investors. 

Flint Capital raises a $160M through an unusual fund-raising strategy

Earlier this week it emerged that the DPC had instigated court proceedings seeking an injunction against X over the data processing without consent.

Elon Musk’s X agrees to pause EU data processing for training Grok

During testing, Google DeepMind’s table tennis bot was able to beat all of the beginner-level players it faced.

Google DeepMind develops a ‘solidly amateur’ table tennis robot

The X account announced that its Premium+ subscription would now be “fully” ad-free, leading some to question how this change would affect creator earnings.

As X sues advertisers over boycott, the app ditches all ads from its top subscription tier

Apple has further revised its compliance plan for the European Union’s Digital Markets Act (DMA) rulebook, which, since March, has forced it to give iOS developers more freedom over how…

Apple revises DMA compliance for App Store link-outs, applying fewer restrictions and a new fee structure

The rise of neobanks has been fascinating to witness, as a number of companies in recent years have grown from merely challenging traditional banks to being massive players in and…

Chime and Dave execs are coming to TechCrunch Disrupt 2024

If you visited the Wikipedia website on mobile this week, you might have seen a pop-up indicating that dark mode is ready for prime time.

How to enable Wikipedia’s dark mode

The home security company says attackers accessed databases containing customer home addresses, email addresses, and phone numbers.

Home security giant ADT says it was hacked

The Looking Glass Pro has a 6-inch display and a foldable base. It shows spatial images like those created with the Apple Vision Pro and iPhone 15 Pro.

Looking Glass’ new lineup includes a $300 phone-sized holographic display

TikTok’s latest offering is capitalizing on the app’s ability to serve as a discovery engine for other media — something its users already take advantage of by sharing short clips…

TikTok partners with Warner Bros. to become a discovery engine for TV and movies

Cocoon is a new startup built on the belief that greener steel production and the creation of concrete slag doesn’t have to be an either/or proposition.

Cocoon is transforming steel production runoff into a greener cement alternative

SoundHound, an AI company that makes voice interface tech used by car companies, restaurants and tech firms, is doubling down on enterprise services by playing consolidator in a crowded market.…

SoundHound acquires Amelia AI for $80M after it raised $189M+

Seeking mental health support is a complex process, but some founders believe that using AI to formalize techniques like cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) can help folks who might not have…

Feeling Great’s new therapy app translates its psychiatrist co-founder’s experience into AI

The U.K.’s antitrust regulator has confirmed that it’s carrying out a formal antitrust investigation into Amazon’s ties with Anthropic, after Amazon recently completed a $4 billion investment into the AI startup.…

UK launches formal probe into Amazon’s ties with AI startup Anthropic