AI music startup Udio is facing another copyright lawsuit — this time a proposed class action on behalf of independent artists who have been “left without a seat at the table” in the high-profile litigation filed by the major labels.
Weeks after news that Universal Music, Warner Music and Sony Music were in talks to potentially settle their billion-dollar lawsuit against Udio, a country singer named Tony Justice is filing his own case against the company in Manhattan federal court.
Seeking to represent “thousands” of other independent artists in a class action, Justice says the earlier lawsuit filed by the Big Three won’t adequately protect the interests of musicians who aren’t signed to a major label deal.
“Independent artists, whose rights have been trampled the most, are the ones left without a seat at the table, unrepresented, and without a meaningful remedy,” attorneys for Justice write in the lawsuit, filed Monday (June 16). “Class members will never be able to claw back the intellectual property unlawfully copied by Udio and used to train its AI.”
A spokesperson for Udio did not immediately return a request for comment on Monday.
AI models like Udio are “trained” by ingesting millions of existing works, thus teaching them to spit out new ones. As AI tech has boomed in recent years, dozens of lawsuits have been filed in federal court over that training process, arguing that AI companies are violating copyrights on a massive scale.
AI firms argue back that such training is legal “fair use,” transforming all those old “inputs” into entirely new “outputs.” Whether that argument succeeds in court is a potentially trillion-dollar question — and one that has yet to be definitively answered by federal judges.
Universal, Warner and Sony sued both Udio and Suno, another AI music firm, last summer, claiming the tech startups had built their models by stealing music on an “unimaginable scale” and “trampling the rights of copyright owners.”
Those cases remain pending, but news broke earlier this month that all three music companies were in talks to potentially settle the litigation by striking licensing deals with the companies. In return for allowing Suno and Udio to train on the vast collections of songs, the proposed deals would see the majors collect fees and receive equity in the startups.
In Monday’s new case against Udio, Justice largely echoes the allegations made by the majors. He says the company has infringed copyrights by training its machines on his songs, including his “Last of the Cowboys,” which has racked up more than 8 million streams on Spotify.
But his case was filed as a proposed class action, meaning he wants to also represent other independent artists who have suffered similar alleged treatment by Udio. He says “thousands” of other artists could eventually be part of the case.
“These acts by Udio were abuse and exploitation of another’s intellectual property of the worst kind,” his lawyers write. “Rather than license copyrighted songs like every other tech-based business is required to do, Udio elected to simply steal the songs of independent artists, plaintiffs, and the class members to then generate AI-soundalike music at virtually no cost to Udio.”
