Country artist sues Cambridge company over AI music generator

A newly filed putative class action against a Cambridge tech firm seeks to strike a blow on behalf of independent artists who — like big record labels — claim their copyrighted works are being harvested for profit by artificial intelligence digital music generators.

The lead plaintiffs are country music artist Anthony Justice and 5th Wheel Records, his Tennessee production company. Justice asserts that he’s sold more than 100,000 albums and garnered some 21 million YouTube views online as an independent artist.

“Plaintiff Justice has received millions of streams on his songs on music platforms such as Spotify, such as his hit song ‘Last of the Cowboys’ which has already received over [8 million] streams,” the complaint in Justice v. Suno Inc. states.

The fly in Justice’s ointment is Cambridge company Suno Inc., which offers a subscription-based generative AI service that creates digital music based on user prompts. According to Justice, Suno’s AI music generator “scrapes and duplicates” tens of millions of publicly available, copyrighted songs by independent artists such as himself in order to “learn” for purposes of creating the content that Suno subscribers pay for.

“Once AI ingests copyrighted music, those songs are stored in its neural network, and not capable of deletion or retraction,” the complaint explains. “These acts by Suno were abuse and exploitation of the worst kind of copyrighted songs owned by independent artists, Plaintiffs, and Class Members. Rather than simply license these copyrighted songs like every other tech-based business does, Suno elected to simply steal the songs and generate AI-soundalike music at virtually no cost to Suno.”

The plaintiff filed suit in U.S. District Court in Massachusetts on June 14. Four days later, Justice filed a similar complaint in the Southern District of New York against another AI-generated music service, Uncharted Labs, Inc.

The suits seek meaningful remedies for independent artists like those being sought in a New York federal suit filed against Udio in June 2024 by major record labels, including Universal Music Group, Sony Music Entertainment and Warner Music Group.

Lead plaintiffs’ counsel in Suno and Uncharted Labs are Krystle Delgado of Delgado Entertainment Law in Scottsdale, Arizona, and Josh Sanford, Jarrett L. Ellzey and Leigh S. Montgomery, of EKSM in Houston. Justice’s local counsel in Suno is Michael V. Glennon, of Brody, Hardoon, Perkins & Kesten in Boston.

“What distinguishes our lawsuits from the major record label lawsuits is that we are asserting the derivatives that were created [from Suno’s AI music generator] are ‘derivatives’ [within the meaning of copyright law] and constitute a separate violation,” Delgado says.

The complaints note that the U.S. Copyright Office released a report in May on copyright and generative AI, which emphasized that the fair use doctrine does not excuse unauthorized training on expressive works, particularly when such works are used to create content that may replace the originals in the marketplace.

Suno in other litigation has already admitted that its AI music generator learned using tens of millions of publicly available songs, Delgado points out.

“The good thing about discovery is that we get to go and understand the gravity and volume of what that means,” she says.

Suno has yet to file an answer to the complaint.

Boston entertainment lawyer Sally R. Gaglini says she could expect Suno to lean on fair use as a defense to the plaintiffs’ claims of copyright infringement.

“The million-dollar question is whether or not [Suno’s] technology model and the associated methodologies used violate existing copyright law,” Gaglini says. “From the complaint, it appears that the defendant is alleged to train its model on publicly available music without getting the consent of copyright owners.”

According to Gaglini, discovery is likely to play a key role in the case.

“The discovery may be instrumental relative to how this technology actually works in relationship with copyrighted works,” she says.

In the wake of the dynamic changes occurring with AI, copyright law in the U.S. has a lot of catching up to do in terms of protecting authorship of creative content, says Boston entertainment lawyer Paul J. Litwin.

“Independent musical artists have as much right as the major label artists to enforce their rights of copyright ownership in their music,” says Litwin of Shames & Litwin. “You could argue that is more important to them from an economic standpoint.”

Gaglini likewise sees Suno as raising significant issues.

“It’s important to ensure that all creators have a seat at the table — both the innovators  behind this AI generative technology and also the underlying content providers who work so hard at their artistic craft,” she says.

Meanwhile, Litwin notes that there’s an interesting, unanswered legal question that Justice’s lawsuit against Suno does not address.

“Who owns that song file that has been spit out by AI?” he asks. “Right now, under current copyright law, only a human being can be the ‘author’ of a creative work [eligible] to be registered [for copyright protection]. So if a user gets a song [from an AI music generator], and they want to be able to sell it, can they put themselves forward as the author? They didn’t really write it.”

Justice’s suit alleges willful infringement of the plaintiffs’ exclusive rights to reproduce their copyrighted work in violation of 17 U.S.C. § 106(1). The plaintiffs further allege that the defendant willfully violated 17 U.S.C. §106(2) by infringing on their exclusive rights to prepare derivative works based on their copyrighted work.

The plaintiff proposes a class consisting of “[a]ll independent recording artists and … any entities owned or controlled by such independent recording [artists] who own sound recordings … which are available on any internet-based streaming service at any time since January 1, 2021.”

Counsel for Suno had not entered an appearance as of press time. The defendant did not respond to a request for comment.