ECSA welcomes RIAA legal actions taken against Suno and Udio

The European Composer and Songwriter Alliance (ECSA) welcomes the legal actions taken by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) and the three major record labels against Suno and Udio to safeguard the value of human creativity and promote responsible generative AI models. We encourage all composers and songwriters’ contractual counterparts and assignees - across Europe and beyond - to engage in similar legal actions to protect the value and creativity of our members’ works.

As stated in the official complaints, “AI companies, like all other enterprises, must abide by the laws that protect human creativity and ingenuity (…). There is nothing that exempts AI technology from copyright law or that excuses AI companies from playing by the rules.” Our Alliance, which represents more than 30.000 professional composers and songwriters across Europe, could not agree more with such a statement. Our community embraces responsible and transparent generative AI models that comply with the principles of music creators’ consent and fair remuneration for the use of their works.  

Unfortunately, too many AI companies, such as Suno and Udio, have so far hidden behind the confidentiality of the data used to blatantly ignore both copyright laws and the fundamental rights of music creators. Despite our strong disagreements with the three music majors on a wide array of topics, we commend the legal actions taken against Suno and Udio in the US. Such actions are essential to ensure that responsible generative AI models can grow in partnership with creators and rightholders without fearing the unfair competition of rogue players that build their secretive multi-billion dollars business models on the unlicensed use of songs and sound recordings and on the hard work of millions of music creators across the world.

Moreover, as the debate about generative AI and human creativity cannot only take place in courts, we also urge European decision makers to engage in a comprehensive and democratic debate with creators to build a clear legal framework preserving their rights and addressing today’s reality as well as the numerous open issues linked to the Text and Data Mining exception (Article 4 of the DSM Directive. European policy makers must design an ambitious strategy for a truly human-centric generative AI that ensures that creators can exercise informed consent, be fairly remunerated for the use of their works through generative AI and receive financial compensation for all the current and future AI-produced content that their creative work has contributed to generate.