Suno, a Music Generative AI, Likely Trained on Copyrighted Materials

One enthusiast in particular was Ed Newton-Rex, who, being a Composer, former VP Audio at Stability AI, and advocate for fair AI training, possesses expertise in both the AI and music fields. Recently, Newton-Rex joined Music Business Worldwide to share a comprehensive analysis of Suno, which led to a depressing conclusion that there’s a high likelihood Suno was trained on copyrighted music, without the necessary licenses held by its creators.

In the article, Newton-Rex thoroughly detailed his experiments with Suno, revealing that the AI is capable of producing music in the style of numerous artists and bands, including Eminem, Ed Sheeran, ABBA, Oasis, Queen, and Blink-182, just to name a few. What’s more alarming, the author discovered that the AI can easily mimic melodies and chord sequences from popular songs, providing music sheets that highlight these similarities.

With the low probability of these occurrences being coincidental, Newton-Rex concluded that Suno was likely trained on copyrighted music. While it’s plausible that the developers obtained all the required licenses, Newton-Rex pointed out that “one of Suno’s investors indicated they didn’t have licenses when they invested, and Billboard’s sources recently confirmed they don’t have licenses in place with the three major labels.” Not surprisingly, Suno’s creators have remained silent on the matter, leaving the question of “how was Suno trained?” without a clear answer.

Additionally, the author shared a TL;DR version of the analysis over on Twitter: