A lawsuit filed by the Recording Industry Association of America is demanding compensation of $150,000 for each song allegedly copied by
artificial intelligence startups Suno and Udio.
The corporations are accused of breaching copyright laws to create clones of hit singles by the RIAA, which says it represents around 85 per cent of all legal music sales in the U.S. including the major labels.
“"The use here [of AI] is far from transformative,” the complainers argued in the suit, filed in New York and Massachusetts federal courts. “There is no functional purpose for... the AI model to ingest the Copyrighted Recordings other than to spit out new, competing music files.”
The
BBC reported that an AI-produced song called “Prancing Queen” was cited as an example, with the RIAA arguing that it was difficult to distinguish it from a genuine
ABBA song.