Suno claims using copyrighted songs to train its AI model constitutes “fair use”AI music generation startup Suno says using copyrighted music to train its AI model constitutes “fair use”.
CEO and founder Mikey Shulman makes the claim in response to a lawsuit by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) against Suno and fellow AI startup Udio. The suit alleges that the companies train their models on copyrighted music.

READ MORE: Will RIAA’s lawsuit against Udio and Suno really be the win we’re hoping for?

In a blog post published on 1 August, Shulman argues that AI “learning” from copyrighted material “is not infringing”.
“We train our models on medium- and high-quality music we can find on the open internet,” he writes, later adding: “Much of the open internet indeed contains copyrighted materials, and some of it is owned by major record labels.
“But, just like the kid writing their own rock songs after listening to the genre – or a teacher or a journalist reviewing existing materials to draw new insights – learning is not infringing. It never has been, and it is not now.”
While it’s heavily open to interpretation, the US “fair use” doctrine permits the use of portions of copyrighted work for such purposes as criticism, commentary and education.
Udio also pushed back against the lawsuit on August 1.
“The premise of their case is that musical styles – the characteristic sounds of opera, or jazz, or rap music – are somehow proprietary,” it has claimed. “Decades of judicial precedent establishes that no company controls a genre or style of music.”
The RIAA has responded to both companies and criticised their statements.
“After months of evading and misleading, defendants have finally admitted their massive unlicensed copying of artists’ recordings,” says a spokesperson. “It’s a major concession of facts they spent months trying to hide and acknowledged only when forced by a lawsuit. Their industrial scale infringement does not qualify as ‘fair use’. There’s nothing fair about stealing an artist’s life’s work, extracting its core value, and repackaging it to compete directly with the originals.”
The RIAA filed its lawsuit against Suno and Udio on June 24, with plaintiffs including Sony Music Entertainment, Universal Music Group and Warner Records Inc.
The record labels have alleged copyright infringement of recorded music at “an almost unimaginable scale”, and are seeking up to $150,000 in damages for each infringed work.
The lawsuit is also seeking to stop the two AI companies from training on the labels’ copyrighted songs.
Learn more about Suno and Udio.
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