• Suno, a target of the RIAA’s recent lawsuit has hit back in a filing this week.
• The company argues that it accessed music that was available on the open web and its solution is no different than a cover artist recreating a song.
• However, the RIAA says that despite its claims, Suno’s use of its partner’s music isn’t fair use.

The tech du jour, generative artificial intelligence is not without its controversies. Chief among these is the habit AI firms have formed whereby copyright is ignored in pursuit of innovation.

As a result of this approach, AI developers are the target of various industries including the incredibly litigious music industry. Back in June the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) filed suits against Udio and Sona, two companies trying to sell folks on AI generated music.

In the lawsuit, RIAA alleged that these firms had used copyright protected music from the record labels that fall within its gamut namely: Universal Music Group, Sony Music Entertainment and Warner Records.

This week Suno filed a response and it makes some interesting arguments to be sure.

The company cites the history of copyright protected music and highlights how legislation around music recordings was created. The crux of the argument is that lawmakers created the legal framework so as to protect recordings from being copied or improperly used and not the styles, arrangements, and tones of one performance in comparison to another,

“The outputs generated by Suno are new sounds, informed precisely by the ‘styles, arrangements and tones’ of previous ones. They are per se lawful,” says Suno.

Except, rather than deny that it used music that is available on the internet, it admitted to it.

“Accordingly, Suno’s training data includes essentially all music files of reasonable quality that are accessible on the open Internet, abiding by paywalls, password protections, and the like, combined with similarly available text descriptions,” writes Suno.

The company says that the RIAA’s claims that it copies this music are unfounded as this trend is commonplace in the music industry. Using Johnny B Goode as an example, Suno highlights that there are “literally hundreds” of different recordings of that song and if Suno recreated it, it would be tantamount to a cover of the song.

The company goes on to say that no person or entity owns a music style which is correct, but Suno wasn’t trained on musical styles. It was trained using recorded music, recordings that cost a record label and artist money and time.

We’re almost certain that if somebody were to copy Suno’s bot and relabel it Funo, the company would take issue with that, even though Suno is on the public web.

The company argues that its use of RIAA partners’ work falls under fair use which the association isn’t buying.

“Their industrial scale infringement does not qualify as ‘fair use’. There’s nothing fair about stealing an artist’s life’s work, extracting its core value, and repackaging it to compete directly with the originals,” a spokesperson for the RIAA told Engadget.

“Defendants had a ready lawful path to bring their products and tools to the market – obtain consent before using their work, as many of their competitors already have. That unfair competition is directly at issue in these cases.”

And that right there is something Suno likely won’t be able to escape. There are ways to license content and instead of doing that, Suno and other AI developers have instead chosen to take the easy and free route which we suspect is why organisations such as the RIAA are suing.

There’s also the fact that these AI companies are profiting from this habit of ignoring copyright protections.

Whether Suno’s arguments will be enough to dismiss the case with prejudice is unknown at this stage but we doubt the RIAA will take this fight laying down.

Expect more AI focussed lawsuit in the future.