This is one AI battle to watch: Music Industry vs. AI Music Generators.
What’s happening: Major record labels are suing AI companies Suno and Udio for massive copyright infringement. Suno and Udio enable text prompts to generate music and lyrics that are remarkably polished (in my opinion). The RIAA, leading the lawsuits, claims these companies used artists’ work without consent and is seeking damages of up to $150,000 per work. Suno has denied using copyrighted works but refuses to show its training data.
My two cents:
1. I support the music labels’ stance that copyrighted works should be protected from unlicensed commercial use. But what about personal use scenarios? Will we see AI apps that can be locally trained on my Spotify playlist to generate songs for my own listening pleasure?
2. There’s a sense of irony with this lawsuit. Since the late 1990s, many musicians have sold their souls to Auto-Tune software so they can sound like robots. Now that robots can sound like humans, the humans get upset.
I am betting that the music labels will win this round. However, I also believe that this will lead to consequences we cannot envision. In the early 2000s, the music industry was quick to shut down Napster, but that somehow led to music being sold on iTunes as easily shareable MP3s. Let’s see what happens this time.