Just a few days ago, amid a barrage of lawsuits sweeping through the generative A.I. sector, a pair of music A.I. startups, Suno and Udio, found themselves facing massive copyright infringement claims from heavyweight record labels, including Universal, Sony, and Warner. The plaintiffs’ claims are somewhat straightforward: They argue that “synthetic musical outputs could saturate the market” and “directly compete with, cheapen, and ultimately drown out the genuine sound recordings.”
Instead of opting for a dismissal motion, however, both startups accepted the claims as laid out. It was a bold maneuver while defending against a lawsuit that could incur hundreds of millions, and perhaps even billions of dollars in damages, propelling these cases straight into the discovery phase and potentially triggering high-stakes trials in the near future.
