Major record labels are seeking to expand their copyright lawsuit against AI music generator Udio by adding allegations that the company ‘illegally scraped’ copyrighted sound recordings from YouTube and violated the Copyright Act’s anti-circumvention provisions.
The proposed amended complaint, filed Friday (September 26) in the US District Court for the Southern District of New York, represents an escalation in the music industry’s legal battle against AI companies.
Universal Music Group, Sony Music Entertainment, and Warner Music Group originally sued Udio and rival Suno in June 2024, alleging the startups trained their AI models on their copyrighted recordings without permission.
The new filing adds a third cause of action under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, claiming Udio “circumvented technological measures” to obtain copyrighted material. The proposed amended complaint against Udio came a week after the labels also updated their lawsuit against Suno with similar additions.
According to the redacted filing obtained by MBW, and which you can read here, Udio “unlawfully” obtained copyrighted recordings by circumventing YouTube’s Terms of Service, which is designed to prohibit the unauthorized use of recordings on its platform.
As with the amended lawsuit against Suno, the labels highlighted the evidence for piracy from the International Confederation of Music Publishers (ICMP), which has apparently been looking into the matter for the past two years.
Billboard reported that Udio and Suno were found to be engaging in piracy to obtain content. The report said the ICMP shared “private datasets that demonstrate the illegal scraping of copyright-protected music from YouTube by US-based music-making apps Udio and Suno.”
In August last year, just two months after they were sued by the major record labels, Suno and Udio have pretty much admitted in court filings that they used copyrighted recordings from the recording companies that sued them.
Suno and Udio have attempted to justify their conduct by claiming ‘fair use’ protections under US copyright law. However, the amended complaint stated that “fair use is not a defense for breach of the Copyright Act’s anti-circumvention clause.”
The labels are now seeking up to $2,500 in statutory damages for each act of circumvention, in addition to the $150,000 per work they’re already claiming for copyright infringement.
Udio, founded by former Google DeepMind researchers, launched its AI music generation service in April 2024. The company allows users to create digital music files from text prompts. When it launched, the company announced that it had raised $10 million in funding from investors including UnitedMasters, the DIY distribution platform that was valued at $550 million in a 2021 funding round; rapper/songwriter/producer will.i.am; rapper Common; investor and activist Kevin Wall (of Live Earth and Live 8 fame); and producer Tay Keith.
In their lawsuit, the record labels said they have tested Udio’s platform, generating outputs that they claim resemble popular songs including The Temptations’ My Girl, Green Day’s American Idiot, and Mariah Carey’s All I Want for Christmas Is You.
The labels’ lawyers wrote: “Shortly after its launch, users discovered this tendency for Udio’s service to generate digital music files containing recognizable vocals. Udio is aware of this. But rather than train its models on legally obtained sound recordings, Udio used copies of the Copyrighted Recordings without permission and attempted to conceal its illegal copying.”
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