Artificial intelligence music powerhouse Suno is trying to trim down a copyright lawsuit brought on behalf of independent artists, saying the case is “cluttered” with baseless legal theories not present in parallel litigation from the major labels.
An indie country singer named Tony Justice filed two federal class action complaints in June against Suno and fellow AI music upstart Udio, claiming thousands of unsigned artists are being left out of the landmark lawsuits brought against the two companies last year by Universal Music Group, Warner Music Group and Sony Music Entertainment.
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Like the major labels, Justice alleges that Suno and Udio are engaging in widespread copyright infringement by training their AI models on unlicensed sound recordings. Udio has not yet responded to the claims, but Suno says in a motion to dismiss filed Monday (Aug. 18) that Justice’s “tag-along” claims will turn on whether AI training constitutes so-called fair use under copyright law.
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The question of fair use in AI training is a complex and unanswered one currently being litigated in a bevy of copyright cases across the country. For now, however, Suno is seeking to cut away a second claim unique to Justice’s lawsuit: allegations that the actual AI songs it spits out are “near exact replicas” of existing songs and thus constitute infringement in their own right.
Suno says this additional theory of liability, which is not present in the major labels’ parallel lawsuit, “simply doesn’t track the law.” According to the AI company, copyright law is clear that a sound recording can only infringe another sound recording if it includes a direct sample from the original.
“That is categorically not how Suno’s tool works,” says the motion. “It exclusively generates new sounds, rather than stitching together samples. For that reason, plaintiffs could never have a good faith basis to allege that a given Suno output is actually an infringing derivative work of one of their songs.”
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This argument serves as a reminder that the copyright lawsuits being brought against Suno and Udio — both by indie artists and the major labels — allege only that these AI companies’ models infringe sound recordings, not their underlying musical compositions.
There’s a much wider legal framework for copyright infringement lawsuits to claim that a piece of music copies elements from an earlier composition. But most compositions are administered separately from artists and labels by music publishers, who have not yet initiated any litigation against Suno or Udio. A coalition of publishers is, however, pursuing copyright claims against AI company Anthropic over song lyrics introduced into the Claude chatbot.
Reached for comment on Tuesday (Aug. 19) Justice’s attorney Krystle Delgado tells Billboard that Suno should not be able to dismiss the class action this early on.
“Difficulty of proof does not insulate Suno from liability,” says Delgado. “Independent artists are entitled to discovery to demonstrate how their works were used and reproduced.”
This story was updated on Aug. 19 at 4:54 p.m. ET to add a comment from Justice’s lawyer.
