Warner Music Group, Udio settle copyright case, plan new AI song creation platform

(Reuters) -Warner Music Group has settled a copyright infringement case with artificial intelligence company Udio and will jointly launch a new platform for song creation in 2026, the companies said on Wednesday. The new subscription service, which will be powered by AI models trained on licensed and authorized songs, enables new revenue streams for the artistes and songwriters while protecting their work. Universal Music Group has also settled a similar copyright case with Udio last month. The deals come at a time when a surge in AI-generated tracks has triggered some platforms like Deezer to clearly mark AI-generated music due to ethical and copyright concerns. Udio's rival Suno, which raised $250 million at $2.45 billion valuation, has also been caught in a copyright dispute with Warner Music Group, Universal Music Group and Sony Music Group. Both companies allow users to generate songs using AI-powered text prompts. The record labels had sued Udio and Suno last year, alleging the AI companies copied hundreds of songs from some of the world's most popular musicians to teach their systems to create music that will "directly compete with, cheapen, and ultimately drown out" human artists. Udio and Suno said the use of copyrighted sound recordings to train their systems qualifies as fair use under U.S. copyright law, and they called the lawsuits attempts to stifle independent competition. Recently, a Deezer and Ipsos survey reveled that a staggering 97% of listeners cannot distinguish between AI-generated and human-composed songs, fanning fears that AI could upend how music is created, consumed and monetized. A May survey by Luminate found the majority of U.S. audiences were indifferent to or accepting of AI use in cinema tasks like visual effects, but sceptical of AI-written scripts or synthetic actors. (Reporting by Jaspreet Singh in Bengaluru; Editing by Tasim Zahid)

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