AI music startup Udio has responded one day after being hit with a copyright infringement lawsuit by the world's largest record companies. Universal Music Group, Sony Music Entertainment, and Warner Music Group have accused Udio and competitor Suno of copyright infringement on an "almost unimaginable scale."
Image source: Picture generated by AI, provided by Midjourney
Now, Udio has posted a lengthy, impassioned statement on X, stating clearly:
"Generative AI models, including our music models, learn from examples. Just as students listen to music and learn from sheet music, our models 'hear' and learn from vast amounts of recorded music.
The goal of model training is to develop an understanding of musical concepts—the fundamental building blocks of musical expression, which do not belong to anyone. Our systems are explicitly designed to create music that reflects new musical ideas. We are not at all interested in replicating content from our training set; in fact, we have implemented and continuously refine state-of-the-art filters to ensure our models do not replicate copyrighted works or artists' voices.
We stand by our technology and believe that generative AI will become mainstream in modern society."
These major record companies' lawsuits accuse AI startups of using vast amounts of copyrighted songs to train their models and generate infringing outputs that are very similar to the original copyrighted training data. The companies believe that the outputs generated by Suno and Udio's AI models are very similar to the original works and replicate specific artists' characteristics, including Jason Derulo's unique habit of singing his own name at the beginning of his songs.
Suno's CEO Mikey Shulman defended the technology in an interview with Wired, claiming it creates new content rather than copying existing music. The rapid rise of AI music generation has led to conflicts over training data and outputs, with no resolution in sight.
Key points:
- Udio responds to major record companies' copyright infringement lawsuits, claiming their technology does not copy copyrighted works.
- Record companies accuse AI music startups of using copyrighted songs to train models and generate infringing outputs similar to the original works.
- The rapid rise of AI music generation has sparked conflicts over training data and outputs, which remain unresolved.