Udio and Suno claim that the legal doctrine of "fair use" protects their actions. They argue that their use of copyrighted music to train their AI models falls under this doctrine, which generally allows copyrighted material to be used without permission for academic, journalistic, and other purposes.
Udio and Suno are facing allegations of copyright infringement on a massive scale, with claims that they have illegally copied famous songs and tracks created by human artists to train their AI models. The lawsuits, filed by major record labels, seek damages up to $150,000 per work infringed and an injunction barring the companies from continuing to train their AI models on copyrighted songs.
Udio and Suno allegedly used stolen music data to train their AI models, allowing users to generate songs based on text prompts. The AI companies claimed fair use of the copyrighted music, but the lawsuits argue that their training on copyright data constitutes copyright infringement.