As AI giants and startups roll out new features for AI-generated music, record labels are taking their fight to court with two new lawsuits over copyrighted content.
Last month was marked by a flurry of announcements from industry giants and startups alike. The same week Universal Music Group and SoundLabs revealed an AI vocal plug-in for artists using their own voices, the tech startup Futureverse began an alpha launch for Jen, an AI music model trained on dozens of licensed music catalogs. Other recent generative AI updates include Google’s DeepMind announcing a new tool for making video soundtracks, and ElevenLabs debuting a new text-to-audio app and Stability AI releasing a new AI sound generator. Amid these advancements, tension is brewing as popular AI music platforms face heightened scrutiny and legal challenges. Startups like Suno and Udio were recently sued by major record labels for alleged copyright violations. But the recording industry’s lawsuits could also help prioritize the use of generative AI tools trained with licensing datasets.
Last week, a group of content-licensing providers announced the formation Dataset Providers Alliance (DPA), of a trade group that aims to promote ethically sourced data. One of the founding members is Rightsify, an AI music startup that offers licensed music datasets to developers and uses its Hydra II model to create AI-generated music for hotels and videos.
