Sony Music and Universal Music want to expand the formal list of recordings that they reckon Suno copied without licence when training its generative AI model, from 560 tracks to 61,026. Sony also wants to expand its formal list of recordings copied by Udio, adding just over 30,000 more recordings.
These lists are very important in the context of the ongoing copyright infringement lawsuits being pursued against the AI companies - both Sony and Universal are suing Suno, while Sony is also still suing Udio.
Under US law, rights owners can ask for up to $150,000 per infringed work in copyright cases. Which means by expanding the Suno infringement list from 560 to 61,026, the potential damages Suno may be forced to pay if it loses the case rise from $84 million to more than $9.1 billion. Which is a lot of money.
It still remains unclear if US-based AI companies like Suno and Udio need to secure licences from record labels before copying all their recordings into a training dataset. Suno and Udio, like most AI businesses, are adamant that AI training is fair use under US law, meaning no rightsholder permission is required.
The music industry, and wider copyright industries, are equally adamant that AI training is not fair use. That dispute is now at the centre of dozens of lawsuits that are working their way through the US courts, involving film studios, book publishers and newspaper owners as well as music companies.
Although we’ve had some initial rulings in a small number of cases, key rulings will be appealed, meaning it will likely take years to get final judgements on any of this.
While AI companies obviously hope they will ultimately prevail in court - and like to pretend that they are certain they will win when discussing these disputes in public - it’s no fun operating with the tangible risk of having to pay out billions in damages in a few years time.
Indeed, Suno and Udio have actually used tens of millions of tracks to train their respective models, so potential damages could be in the trillions.
Rightsholders are trying to use that risk to pressure AI companies into signing licensing deals, so they pay upfront licensing fees today to avoid having to pay out a trillion dollars in damages in the future.
That risk helped pressure Udio into agreeing licensing deals with both Universal and Warner Music, which is why Sony is the only major still suing the company. Warner Music also agreed a deal with Suno and dropped out of that litigation as well.
Presumably by expanding the list of infringed recordings so that the potential damages in the Suno and Udio cases are now officially in the billions instead of the millions, it’s hoped that further pressure can be put on both companies to get all their major label licences in place.
In court filings, Sony and Universal explain that they are having to add to the list of infringed recordings at this relatively late stage in the proceedings because both AI companies have refused to be transparent about what music they have actually used when training their models.
The initial much shorter lists of allegedly infringed tracks previously submitted to the court were put together via “a highly manual and burdensome process” undertaken before the original lawsuits were filed.
The more expansive lists were only possible following the respective discovery stages of the two legal battles, when parties exchanged documents and information.
Adding to these lists now doesn’t change any of the legal arguments in the two lawsuits, the majors insist, while also pointing out that, even with tens of thousands more recordings added, these lists are still pretty modest, given millions of tracks controlled by the majors were likely used by both Suno and Udio.
Unsurprisingly, both AI companies are objecting to these requests to expand the lists of allegedly infringed works. They argue that it’s all happening too late in the day and will unfairly delay proceedings. However, the majors counter that those complaints are “meritless”.
Yes, there will need to be some extra discovery to confirm Universal and Sony actually own the copyrights in the recordings on the new lists, but that should be relatively easy to do, and could be done after the judge has ruled on the core fair use arguments.
Or not at all if - as the music companies presumably hope - the mere threat of multi-billion dollar damages pushes both Suno and Udio into signing deals with all three majors.