Several weeks after being targeted with copyright infringement lawsuits, AI music startups Suno and Udio have now accused the record labels that filed them of attempting to quell competition within the music industry. Both companies admitted to training their music-generating AI models on copyrighted materials in separate legal filings, arguing that doing so is lawful under fair-use doctrine.
The lawsuits against Suno and Udio were raised in June by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), a group representing major record labels like Universal Music Group (UMG), Sony Music Entertainment, and Warner Records. Both cases accuse Suno and Udio of committing “copyright infringement involving unlicensed copying of sound recordings…