The major record labels are taking legal action against AI music giant Suno for allegedly scraping their songs from YouTube, inspired by Anthropic’s recent $1.5 billion copyright settlement and citing an exclusive Billboard report on mass piracy in AI training.
Universal Music Group, Warner Music Group, and Sony Music Entertainment have collaborated for over a year to pursue copyright infringement litigation against both Suno and Udio, the other significant player in the rapidly growing AI music sector, for allegedly using unlicensed songs to train their models.
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The labels are now seeking to add a piracy claim to the lawsuit against Suno, stating in court filings that they have recently confirmed the AI company illegally downloaded its training music from YouTube using a piracy method known as “stream-ripping.” The proposed amended complaint references an exclusive Billboard report that revealed private datasets showing how both Suno and Udio scraped music from the internet on a large scale.
According to the complaint, stream-ripping violates the Digital Millennium Copyright Act by bypassing YouTube encryption measures specifically designed to prevent downloads. The labels’ new proposed claims seek maximum damages for this alleged violation: $2,500 for each act of piracy.
“Suno’s circumvention of YouTube’s technological measures has facilitated its ongoing and large-scale infringement of Plaintiffs’ copyrights through its unauthorized use of the Universal works, the Sony works, and the Warner works in its training data,” states the amended complaint.
On behalf of the labels, the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) stated that Suno “has gone to great lengths to hide whether its AI models were trained on copyrighted music and how those works were obtained.”
“And yet, Suno has continued a game of deception because it knew its conduct was illegal,” added the RIAA.
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Suno’s representatives did not immediately respond to requests for comment regarding the proposed amended complaint. The labels have not yet taken steps toward filing this type of piracy claim against Udio.
The proposed amendment follows AI company Anthropic’s agreement to pay $1.5 billion to authors for using pirated books in building its central library. Similar to record labels, many AI copyright litigants have been working to strengthen their lawsuits with new piracy claims, including music publishers suing Anthropic over song lyrics used in AI training.
The renewed focus on piracy can be traced back to June when Judge William Alsup ruled that Anthropic would be held liable for storing pirated books. Anthropic settled rather than face trial over damages, but it remains uncertain whether Judge Alsup will approve the $1.5 billion deal.
In his June ruling, Judge Alsup stated that it is not illegal for Anthropic to train its chatbot Claude on copyrighted books. He indicated that training constitutes fair use: a fundamental principle of copyright law allowing protected works to be reused for “transformative” purposes like news reporting or parody.
The legality of AI training as fair use is currently being debated in numerous copyright lawsuits across the country, including in the case involving record labels. Suno and Udio argue that training their AI music machines on existing songs is transformative, and both companies are expected to present these arguments after the discovery process concludes.
