Who Owns AI-Generated Music? I Asked People That Make It

Copyright laws need an update for our current day

If you’ve read about artificial intelligence and music in the popular press, you’ve likely heard of at least one company: Suno. A startup based in Massachusetts, Suno claims to be “building a future where anyone can make great music.” How? They allow you to enter a description into a text box — say, “afrocuban jazz song about cats” — and, in a matter of moments, they’ll return two full recordings that fit said description. Impressive? Yes. Somewhat frightening? Also, yes. Legal? That requires a longer discussion.

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Who Owns AI-Generated Music? I Asked People That Make It

By Chris Dalla Riva

When Suno first launched to the public, there was speculation that the technology was built on thousands upon thousands of copyrighted songs. In August 2024, that speculation was no more. Suno admitted it when responding to a lawsuit filed by the world’s largest music labels:

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 … Suno’s training data includes essentially all music files of reasonable quality that are accessible on the open Internet, abiding by paywalls, password protections, and the like, combined with similarly available text descriptions.

To be clear, the labels did not allege that Suno’s musical output is infringing on their copyrights. They alleged that you can’t use millions of copyrighted recordings to build a tool like this without permission from those who own the recordings. Suno, in response, claimed that this actually wasn’t an issue: “It is fair use under copyright law to make a copy of a protected work as part of a back-end technological process, invisible to the public, in the service of creating an ultimately non-infringing new product.”

Here’s a specific example of what they mean. When you prompt Suno to make a “50s rock n roll song about cars,” the labels can’t claim that the output infringes on their copyright because it sounds like a Chuck Berry song in their catalog. Styles of music are not copyrightable. James Brown, for example, cannot own funk music in its entirety despite how necessary he was in creating it. Similarly, Universal Music Group cannot own rock music despite their vast back-catalog of the genre’s foundational recordings.

Though Suno cites some interesting precedents where the intermediate use of copyrighted material was indeed deemed fair use, I’m not really convinced by their argument. There are no hard and fast rules about what constitutes fair use, but Section 107 of the Copyright Act lays out a framework that courts can work with.

1. Purpose and Character of Use: If a new work uses a copyrighted work in highly transformative way or is used for educational or non-profit purposes, then it is more likely to be deemed fair use.

2. Nature of the Copyrighted Work: If a new work uses a copyrighted work for commentary or criticism, then it is more likely to be deemed fair use.

3. Amount of Copyrighted Work Used in Relation to the Whole: If a new work only uses a small portion of a copyrighted work, then it is more likely to be deemed fair use.

4. Effect on Value of Original Copyrighted Work: If a new work is unlikely to compete with the copyrighted work it is using, then it is more likely to be deemed fair use.

Looking at these tenants, along with a few other considerations, it’s hard to imagine a judge looking favorably on Suno’s technology given their business model, the scope of copyrighted material that they’ve used, and the ability of their technology to devalue current music. While I could go on about this, let’s ask another group what they think, namely Suno’s users.