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AI startups Udio and Suno argued that using copyrighted recordings to train their AI systems was fair use and legal, while a spokesperson for the Recording Industry Association of America said the two companies were "unfairly stealing artists' life's work, extracting its core content and repackaging it to compete with the original work."

The American music industryGenerative AIThe company's copyright battle continues.

Recently, artificial intelligence startups Udio and Suno responded to the copyright infringement lawsuit previously filed by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) in the U.S. federal court. In the legal documents they submitted in response, they believed that the use of copyrighted recordings to train their artificial intelligence systems fell within the scope of fair use.

On June 24 this year, the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) filed a lawsuit against music AI companies Udio and Suno. The association filed a class action lawsuit on behalf of three major music publishers, Sony Music, Universal Music Group (UMG) and Warner Music, accusing them of using record companies' recordings to train music generation artificial intelligence systems, claiming that these startups used copyrighted music "on an almost unimaginable scale" in training data, enabling artificial intelligence models to generate songs that "mimic the quality of real human records."

In the lawsuit, the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) is trying to claim up to $150,000 in damages for each piece of music. According to Reuters, in response to the lawsuit, Suno and Udio responded to the U.S. federal court's legal documents on August 1, arguing that under U.S. copyright law, using copyrighted recordings to train their artificial intelligence systems falls within the scope of fair use and is legal. Udio wrote in the document, "Based on the long-term principle, Udio uses existing recordings as data for mining and analysis to identify sound patterns in various musical styles, all in order to enable people to create their own new works, which is a typical 'fair use' under copyright law."

A spokesman for the Recording Industry Association of America said the two companies "are unfairly stealing artists' life's work, extracting its essence and repackaging it to compete with the original work."

The lawsuit is a microcosm of the music industry's long struggle with generative AI companies. According to foreign media reports, Universal Music Group and other music publishers have previously sued another generative AI company, Anthropic, claiming that it was using copyrighted lyrics as user prompts. According to CNN, in April this year, more than 200 well-known musicians including Billie Eilish, the Jonas Brothers, and Katy Perry signed an open letter from the nonprofit Artist Rights Alliance, calling on AI developers, technology companies, platforms, and digital music services to "stop using AI to infringe and devalue the rights of human artists."

You Yunting, senior partner of Shanghai Dabang Law Firm, who has long been concerned about copyright infringement disputes, believes that whether the use of copyrighted content as training materials for artificial intelligence requires the permission of the copyright owner is currently a controversial issue around the world. In this case, there are two main issues involved: first, whether the training materials need to be authorized; second, whether the generated content, if similar to the copyrighted works of others, constitutes infringement.

You Yunting pointed out that currently, courts in both China and the United States have accepted cases where copyright holders sued AI service providers for infringement of training materials. Currently, these cases have not been judged, so there is no conclusion yet. Chinese copyright holders believe that the use of copyrighted content for training is a form of other rights stipulated in the Copyright Law. However, AI service providers believe that this is a transformative use and is fair use. However, if the content output by AI is similar to the copyrighted works of others, it is likely to be suspected of infringement.