The executives of the German music copyright organization GEMA recently voiced their concerns regarding the use of music copyrights by artificial intelligence. CEO Dr. Tobias Holzmüller urged that the AI market should show greater respect for the rights of creators, while Supervisory Board Chairman Dr. Ralf Weigand suggested establishing a new legal framework to ensure that AI companies pay fair compensation to copyright holders. GEMA proposed that AI companies should pay 30% of their net revenue from the use of copyrighted materials.
This statement follows GEMA's lawsuit against OpenAI's ChatGPT for using copyrighted lyrics in November 2024. Meanwhile, the AI music creation platform Suno is also facing copyright lawsuits from GEMA and major record labels.
In response to the lawsuits, Suno co-founder Mikey Shulman argued that critics misunderstand the nature of their technology. He stated that their AI system creates music by learning patterns and structures, similar to how humans learn by listening to music, rather than simply copying specific songs. This defense of "learning does not equal stealing" aligns with the positions of other AI companies in similar cases.
These disputes reflect a larger issue: there is still a lack of clear fair use rules regarding the training of AI systems with copyrighted data on a global scale. The legal battles between copyright holders and AI companies may drive the formation of relevant legal frameworks.
