AI Startup Suno Claims “Fair Use” Copyright Doctrine Allows Training On Major Recordings

AI startup Suno has admitted that it uses copyrighted songs to train its AI model. But, it argues, doing so is legal under copyright law’s “fair use” doctrine.

Suno is one of two companies (Udio being the other) sued in June by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) over use of its members’ recordings. Suno’s confession that its AI model used copyrighted songs came in a court filing.

“It is no secret that the tens of millions of recordings that Suno’s model was trained on presumably included recordings whose rights are owned by the Plaintiffs in this case,” the filing states.

Suno CEO and co-founder Mikey Shulman amplified that stance in a blog post today. “We train our models on medium- and high-quality music we can find on the open internet… Much of the open internet indeed contains copyrighted materials, and some of it is owned by major record labels.”

Schulman said such use is viewed by Suno as “early but promising progress. Major record labels see this vision as a threat to their business.” He added, “learning is not infringing. It never has been, and it is not now.”

Shulman also argued that training its AI model from data on the “open internet” is no different than a “kid writing their own rock songs after listening to the genre.”

The RIAA responded “It’s a major concession of facts they spent months trying to hide and acknowledged only when forced by a lawsuit. 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…Their vision of the ‘future of music’ is apparently one in which fans will no longer enjoy music by their favorite artists because those artists can no longer earn a living.”

The resolution of the lawsuit will likely set a precedent in what is acceptable use in AI training.