Major Record Labels Sue AI Company Behind 'BBL Drizzy' (theverge.com) 53
A group of record labels including the big three -- Universal Music Group (UMG), Sony Music Entertainment, and Warner Records -- are suing two of the top names in generative AI music making, alleging the companies violated their copyright "en masse." From a report: The two AI companies, Suno and Udio, use text prompts to churn out original songs. Both companies have enjoyed a level of success: Suno is available for use in Microsoft Copilot though a partnership with the tech giant. Udio was used to create "BBL Drizzy," one of the more notable examples of AI music going viral.
The case against Suno was filed in Boston federal court, and the Udio case was filed in New York. The labels say artists across genres and eras had their work used without consent. The lawsuits were brought by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), the powerful group representing major players in the music industry, and a group of labels. The RIAA is seeking damages of up to $150,000 per work, along with other fees.
The case against Suno was filed in Boston federal court, and the Udio case was filed in New York. The labels say artists across genres and eras had their work used without consent. The lawsuits were brought by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), the powerful group representing major players in the music industry, and a group of labels. The RIAA is seeking damages of up to $150,000 per work, along with other fees.
Much of pop music... (Score:5, Interesting)
...is constructed in a way that is very similar to the way AI works
Trendmongers and marketoids observe what is trendy and popular, and hire composers, lyricists and an army of other professionals to copy the style almost exactly with just enough variation to make it sound "new" and "fresh". AI can do this more efficiently
Of course, the stuff that's produced isn't art, but it appears that consumers don't want art, they want the familiar and easily accessible
I hope that once the AI fad passes, people will get bored with derivative stuff and demand real creativity. Current AI is incapable of creativity and there are lots of creative people out there who deserve a chance at being heard
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I hope that once the AI fad passes
I was with you until here. Will this occur before or after the internet fad passes?
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I hope that once the AI fad passes
I was with you until here. Will this occur before or after the internet fad passes?
And before or after Linux on the Desktop?
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...is constructed in a way that is very similar to the way AI works
Trendmongers and marketoids observe what is trendy and popular, and hire composers, lyricists and an army of other professionals to copy the style almost exactly with just enough variation to make it sound "new" and "fresh". AI can do this more efficiently
Of course, the stuff that's produced isn't art, but it appears that consumers don't want art, they want the familiar and easily accessible
I hope that once the AI fad passes, people will get bored with derivative stuff and demand real creativity. Current AI is incapable of creativity and there are lots of creative people out there who deserve a chance at being heard
It's interesting to note that you sort of equate AI and human songwriters in terms of producing derivative pop music but then speculate that AI is an ephemeral fad while derivative songwriting will endure.
The truth is that AI is here to stay. One of the reasons is that there are already many different domains for AI, and the set of domains will continue to increase. Just because each domain will progress at a different rate doesn't doom the general technique for everything. This is true for AI for genera
Music is algorithimic (Score:2)
Copyright (Score:4, Interesting)
Pretty sure this is a show of force lawsuit, with no hope of actually winning. They'd have to point to a specific work released by an AI and show it's significantly similar to one of their existing copyrighted works.
The corollary to this is that AI generated stuff is not copyrightable. Using AI generated stuff in works created by human still is, I think.
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If I recall the current interpretation of the rules correctly, if generation is purely by AI with no human input, it's not copyrightable.
https://s3.documentcloud.org/d... [documentcloud.org]
Relevant line is on page 14:
"The Register therefore made her decision based on the fact the application presented that plaintiff played no role in using the AI to generate the work, which plaintiff never attempted to correct."
But if human enters a prompt and AI generates based on that, it's copyright of the person who entered the prompt. So
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Kinda.
The standard for copyrightability is based around human creative endeavour. It's not just "typed something into a prompt"; you have to show that there was enough human creative endeavour over the form and function of the work.
This isn't AI-specific. Some random email that you shot off or some cell phone picture that you hastily snapped probably wouldn't stand up in court as copyrightable either. You need to show nontrivial creative work on your part.
And you indeed can do this with AI, but the work
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>It's not just "typed something into a prompt"; you have to show that there was enough human creative endeavour over the form and function of the work.
Typing out a few words into a short story is sufficient. That's what an AI prompt is.
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If you write something that on its own would be deemed a creative work, then that work - and derivatives thereof (such as running it through an AI tool) - should be protected.
But it can't be de minimis. A prompt of "a cute purple puppy on a slide, worm's eye view, golden hour, award-winning photograph" isn't going to cut it.
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Of course it can. I can do less. I can just grab a can of paint and throw it at a wall. Voila, copyrightable art. Less effort.
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You're free to try that argument out in court.
(Hint: it's not going to fly)
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Except that of course, courts have long recognised copyright even in taking a banana and taping it to a wall.
In fact, it doesn't even have to be that exact tape, banana, or wall. It's the concept made by the author. You sell a certificate to copyright.
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Rote description is not copyrightable. Sorry.
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Are you gnostic and believe that words are spells that enchant the world, and therefore saying them will make them true?
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But if human enters a prompt and AI generates based on that, it's copyright of the person who entered the prompt. Something to do with legal personhood if I understand the argument correctly.
There has to be substantial human effort for a work to receive copyright protection.
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Examples of legally accepted "substantial human effort".
Short story of a few words.
Paint thrown at canvas.
Banana taped to a wall.
Re: Copyright (Score:3)
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No, they very much have a chance for winning (much as it pains me to agree with the music industry on anything). Copyright, as the name implies, gives the owner the right to control how and when copies of the work are made. Training an "AI" requires making copies of the original work. So unless the rights holder gives permission, using copyrighted data for AI training is a violation of copyright.
So how does this differ from a human artist listening to all that music and then (using natural intelligence) creating works of a similar style? These days *all* works have some degree of "inspiration" and "derivation" -- whether that's done by machine or human mind makes no difference surely?
Re: Copyright (Score:2)
Re: Copyright (Score:3)
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"No, making a search engine literally involves making a copy of the search data set. If you walk through any guide on how to get started making your own search engine the second step (after you install your database etc) is literally "go download a copy of all the data on the internet". Even if you argue that the process of creating a search engine is somehow similar to a human browsing the web (which it's really not: the word "spidering" is used by analogy with how humans browse, the fundamental process is
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No, they very much have a chance for winning (much as it pains me to agree with the music industry on anything). Copyright, as the name implies, gives the owner the right to control how and when copies of the work are made. Training an "AI" requires making copies of the original work. So unless the rights holder gives permission, using copyrighted data for AI training is a violation of copyright.
They'd have to *prove* a copy was made. The companies being sued could provide their models and, if the plaintiffs can coerce a model to faithfully reproduce an original copyrighted song, they'd have a good case. Otherwise, how could you prove a copy was made and, more importantly to damages, redistributed?
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Copyright doesn't give the holder a dictatorship over works. There are numerous fair use exemptions. And one that has long been upheld is that the automated processing of copyrighted works to create new transformative goods and services is fair use . Which is why like 98% of Google's entire business model isn't illegal.
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Maybe the "Blurred Lines" lawsuit would be precedent for the RIAA to actually win this, as opposed to just putting pressure on the AI firms.
Though, that decision was a bad one, it is still on the books as a win for 'similar sounding' music to be found as violating a copyright.
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Maybe the "Blurred Lines" lawsuit would be precedent for the RIAA to actually win this,
Copyright claims are brought in civil court. Precedent doesn't work the same way in civil court as it does in criminal court. The court may take into account previous decisions, but they aren't bound by them.
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The last rulings on the output were that not even heavily edited outputs are copyrightable. So they are left with suing about the training data and for that they probably have to show that it can be reproduced. I think little is known about the music models, so it is hard to tell if they may have memorized (too much) original data.
It's the wrong argument (Score:2)
LLMs are much like human musicians - using a wide range of influences, they generate something different. Humans are still better at it because they're intelligent and have a much broader experience base to use when reviewing and editing their first attempts, but the point is the process is effectively the same for both: 'listen to something, create a variation of it'.
If you want to shut down AI-generated music on the basis that it was trained on someone's music, then you should shut down ALL new music. E
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Getting a law will require an Act of Congress, and cash and lobbyists.
Getting the courts to rule is cheaper.
They show their hand (Score:3)
...and here we see these companies showing their hand, proving that they feel they are entitled to money for the production of any music whatsoever by anyone, signed or not, in perpetuity,
When the result is lacking anything resembling distinct components of any given work, what AI does in generating this pap is no different than what any other uninspired hack does when writing a new song of a requested genre. The labels are just mad they won't be able to bully or coerce the AIs into signing exclusivity contracts. They would not dare do this with a human artist because their claim would boil down to "you heard some music someone else made so you owe us money!" which is obviously unjustifiable and is miles from how copyright works.
You can be sure they're hoping to use their massive portfolio of lawyers to convince the defendants to settle quickly before anyone sees what kind of a deranged precedent they're attempting to set. Much like how the RIAA has made sure that no one is allowed to sell any kind of music playing device that doesn't give them royalties because somehow they're entitled to money from all music, everywhere (because they sue anyone who makes a music playing device until they get "their cut of the action").
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and here we see these companies showing their hand, proving that they feel they are entitled to money for the production of any music whatsoever by anyone, signed or not, in perpetuity
Did anyone ever believe otherwise in good faith?
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Is this any different than people believing they are entitled to someone else's music without paying the owner of that music?
Only $150,000 per song? (Score:2)
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$150,000 per violation is the statutory limit in cases where actual damages exceeding that cannot be proven (and since there's no actual damages at all, in this case, it can't be).
17 U.S. Code 504 (c) (2)
In a case where the copyright owner sustains the burden of proving, and the court finds, that infringement was committed willfully, the court in its discretion may increase the award of statutory damages to a sum of not more than $150,000.
The RIAA was suing for many, many, many violations at a time.
Usual corporate posturing, no good guys here (Score:2)
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As usual, they always tried their hardest to stop anything that makes things go forward and that they don't control. Anyway, it'll soon turn into a tidal wave of generative music, and there will be little they can do about it.
Does your AI violate copyright? (Score:2)
Probably.
Can you AI-generate content and own the copyright?
We don't really know. But probably not.
Should AI have the same rights as a corporation or individual when it comes to protecting creative works?
No. Because where do you draw the line? Want to define a new kind of legal fiction in order to grant a set of algorithms personhood? Can my BASIC program running on a Commodore 64 also get the same personhood protection that AI will probably get one day?
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To get around the copyright problem (AI works not being protected by copyright) all the studios have to do is get some backing artist to play along and mix it into the final product. That work is then copyrightable because it contains a performance by a human. I can predict with some certainty that this is the direction the recording industry will be headed.
Pretty soon a good percentage of popular music will be AI generated with a small percentage of "real human TM" material and the studios will make a
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Sure you can edit a video or image or remix the audio (never underestimate the value of a good audio engineer). And (I believe) have a copyright on the final product. But the original AI-generated "creation" without those edits is probably not copyrighted. Not that it is easy to get back to the source material ... unless you ask an AI to make something just like it. oops!
In practice, if a billion dollar corporation can convince YouTube, Shutterstock, etc that they are the original creator then they can sho
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AI is no different, it needs to 'listen' first before it can produce anything. You listening to music and then writing some is not copyright infringement, so why should it be for AI ?!?
Potential (Score:1)
One thing came to mind as I was reading this: there are absolutely massive payments from social media giants to music corporations over users putting copyrighted songs in their videos.
Obvious step would be to let users generate their own music for background of their videos and cut music companies off. Youtube, Tiktok, Instagram etc have the resources to do this, and save countless billions in royalties.
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Thing is nobody knows and therefore doesn't really like the AI generated or royalty free stuff as much (outside of the tracks that have been so used they are just part of the cultural fabric now). People use popular music precisely because it is popular and it can convey a common sense of familiarity, same reason filmmakers use a popular song for a scene over say the score someone is creating for just the movie.
If the social media companies are in fact doling out royalties for users using the music then the
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People don't use popular music in those videos all that much. They usually use stock background music. Popular music is too distracting for background videos.
But there are royalties for good background music.
This should be interesting (Score:2)
On the one hand, if the corporates lose then that will open the floodgates of AI-generated music.
On the other hand, if the corporates win that'll open the floodgates for every content creator to sue every AI company for copyright infringement citing this case as precedent.
The gripping hand is holding a big bucket of popcorn...
Hard to have a dog in this fight. (Score:2)
Music industry; "Hey, only we get to rip off the creative people!"
Cool (Score:2)
I use these a lot (Score:2)
I use these tools a lot and they are like a sophisticated synthesizer, or to put it in geek terms, its like writing code in a high-level language vs machine code (playing an individual instrument). I have studied music, can play two instruments, and sing live almost every week, but I can't pull together a band to produce the type of music I want to produce, and indeed, as I am white, I cannot sing like a black person (yes, we do sound different, live with it). However, with this tool, I can, and it also all