Suno admitted in its court papers that it used copyrighted songs to train its AI music maker. The Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) had sued Suno and another startup called Udio for doing this.
Suno said in its filing that it used millions of real songs to teach its computer. Many of these songs belong to music labels that are part of the RIAA. Suno’s CEO Mikey Shulman wrote in a blog post that they got these songs from the internet like anyone can find. He compared it to a kid learning to write rock music by listening to rock songs.
Shulman said this kind of learning is not against the law. It’s no different than how people have always learned. The computer was just copying what real musicians had already done to get better at making new music, like a student copying a teacher.
The RIAA disagreed. They said Suno is trying to hide what they did for a long time. Using so many copyrighted songs without permission is wrong. The RIAA accused Suno of just stealing other artists’ work to compete directly against the original songs. They argued this vision of the music future won’t work if artists can’t earn money from their songs anymore.
The question of what is fair use is complicated. This court case could help decide how AI uses copyrighted work going forward. It could impact more than just Suno and Udio.
