On June 25, Caixin reported that the world's three major record companies - Universal Music, Sony Music and Warner Music - sued AI music technology companies Udio and Suno for using their content to train AI systems that generate music, which allegedly violated copyright on a large scale.

The record companies pointed out that these AI companies copied music without clear authorization in order to train their AI systems to generate music. These music works may compete with those created by human artists in the market, thereby reducing the value of artistic works and eventually drowning out human artists' works.

In response, Suno CEO Mikey Shulman issued a statement saying, "Our technology is transformative, designed to produce entirely new outputs rather than memorizing and repeating existing content, and does not allow users to reference specific artists."

The record companies requested the court to award up to $150,000 in compensation for each allegedly "copied" song by the defendants. They accused Suno of copying 662 songs and Udio of copying 1670 songs.

It is worth noting that this is the first lawsuit in the AI-generated music model related to AIGC, while previous copyright lawsuits were initiated by writers, news media, and others accusing AI companies of abusing their works to train text-based AI models to provide nutrients for ChatGPT and other chatbots.

The record companies allege that Suno and Udio have been "intentionally avoiding" the content they use to train their technology, and revealing this content would "acknowledge deliberate copyright infringement, the scale of which is almost unimaginable."

In fact, training data is an essential part of the AI model's growth, and good training content and larger parameter models determine good generation results. Suno and Udio's ability to stand out definitely depends on good musical works.

Udio was founded last year by a group of former Google Deepmind engineers. According to the company, Udio aims to "enable anyone to create emotionally resonant music in an instant." In April of this year, the company raised $10 million in funding.

Meanwhile, Suno raised $125 million in funding last month. The platform allows users to create songs with just a few prompts, relying on ChatGPT to develop lyrics and titles.

Mitch Glazier, CEO of the Recording Industry Association of America, said that these lawsuits are necessary to strengthen the responsible, ethical, and legal development of AI systems, and to put an end to Suno and Udio's blatant infringement of copyright.