Jason Isbell and Musicians File Class Action Lawsuit Against Suno for AI Identity Exploitation

Jason Isbell, other musicians sue Suno over AI training

Sept 1 (Reuters) - A group of musicians including renowned singer-songwriter Jason Isbell has filed a class-action lawsuit against AI music generator Suno in Massachusetts federal court for allegedly violating their publicity rights. Isbell, singer David Lowery of the rock bands Cracker and Camper Van Beethoven, blues musician Guy Forsyth and saxophonist Eduardo Calle said in their lawsuit, opens new tab filed on Monday that Suno used their identities without permission to enable users to create songs in their style. The lawsuit is the latest in a wave of cases brought against tech companies by authors, publishers, news outlets and others over the use of their work to train AI systems. Unlike many music-related AI training cases, which ⁠were brought by labels and focus on the alleged misuse of lyrics, compositions and sound recordings under copyright law, the artists' proposed class action against Suno focuses on their name, image and likeness rights. "Many musicians sell their rights to specific recordings. However, the identity right belongs to the performer regardless of who owns any copyright in an underlying recording," the lawsuit said. "This lawsuit seeks to recover the value of those misappropriated identities and to stop their ongoing commercial exploitation." Spokespeople for Suno did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Tuesday. An attorney for the musicians declined to comment on the filing. The lawsuit alleges that ⁠Suno falsely claims its users cannot enter musicians' names as prompts. "In reality, Suno not only accepts names but also responds to the name with an output based on that musician's identity," the complaint said. The lawsuit said Suno responded to a prompt with Jason Isbell's name with an Americana song called "Paper Bell" that imitates his "characteristic clear male vocals ⁠and country twang." The complaint also named several other artists Suno allegedly imitated on command, including the other plaintiffs, Carly Simon, Buddy Guy and rappers Common and Chief Keef. The musicians requested an unspecified amount of monetary damages and ⁠a court order blocking Suno from using their likenesses. The case is Isbell v. Suno Inc, U.S. District Court for the District of Massachusetts, No. 1:26-cv-14005. For the musicians: George Zelcs, Marc Wallenstein and Audrey Austin of ⁠Korein Tillery For Suno: not yet available Music labels' AI lawsuits create copyright puzzle for courts Warner Music Group settles copyright case with Suno for licensed AI music Music publisher sues Anthropic, Suno over AI training Sony, Warner Music sue Anthropic over songs used in AI training Reporting by Blake Brittain in Washington Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles., opens new tab Blake Brittain Thomson Reuters Blake Brittain reports on intellectual property law, including patents, trademarks, copyrights and trade secrets, for Reuters Legal. He has previously written for Bloomberg Law and Thomson Reuters Practical Law and practiced as an attorney.

Jason Isbell and Others Say Suno's A.I. Imitates Their Voices

Jason Isbell and three others filed a lawsuit against Suno, accusing the company of training its model on their songs. The suit will test a legal strategy not based on copyright but unlawful imitation. Four musicians, including the acclaimed independent singer-songwriter Jason Isbell, sued the music A.I. company Suno on Monday, accusing it of imitating their voices and distinctive styles without permission. The musicians who brought the case -- who also include Guy Forsyth, Eduardo Calle and David Lowery, an outspoken advocate for artists' rights in the digital age -- were seeking class-action status from the court. Suno, which was founded in 2022, is one of a number of platforms that allow online users, whether professional musicians or total amateurs, to create songs by entering a few descriptive words or phrases into a text box. Within minutes, or even seconds, Suno generates a tune based on the user's prompt. In a crowded field of A.I. music, Suno has become a leader, with investors valuing the company at $5.4 billion, far more than any independent competitor. But like other A.I. music companies, Suno has faced a series of lawsuits from the music industry over how its machine-learning model was trained. Record companies and music publishers have said the company has violated copyright on a massive scale by using millions of songs without their permission. In court papers, Suno has defended its model by saying that the training is allowed under fair use, a legal principle that offers a defense against copyright infringement claims in limited circumstances. The latest suit, filed in U.S. District Court in Massachusetts, opens up a new legal front against Suno, focusing not on copyright but on what the plaintiffs say is an unlawful imitation of the personal styles and voices of specific artists. According to the musicians' complaint, Suno "encoded musicians' identities into its A.I. model to create its commercial product without consent, and now exploits those identities by publicly using musicians' names to Suno's considerable commercial benefit." They cited state privacy and right-of-publicity laws in more than a dozen states, including Massachusetts, New York, Tennessee, California and Texas. (Mr. Isbell, as the suit notes, lives in Tennessee; the other plaintiffs, the suit says, reside in Georgia, Texas and Florida.) The suit seeks unspecified damages. Some major music companies, in an effort to set commercial terms and earn money from licensing, have settled their suits with A.I. companies. Last year, Warner Music settled with Suno and another A.I. company, Udio, and said it is working with both companies to develop new, licensed models. But many artists have been skeptical of artificial intelligence, expressing worries about a future in which music made primarily by human beings will compete against vast numbers of A.I.-generated songs. "No suno for me thanks," Mr. Isbell, an Americana artist with six Grammy Awards, wrote in July on social media. A representative of Suno said the company believed the claims were "without merit and we intend to defend against them," and pointed to a recent blog post by Mikey Shulman, the company's co-founder and chief executive. In it, Mr. Shulman said the company had "never allowed prompts for specific artists or copyrighted works." The suit notes that Suno says users are blocked from using specific names in their prompts, but calls that false. It says that when the name "Jason Isbell" was entered into the system, it produced "an Americana song called 'Paper Bell,' imitating Isbell's characteristic clean male vocals and country twang." The suit says that Suno can also imitate songs by superstars like Taylor Swift and Bruno Mars if users simply type in those artists' names with spaces separating each letter ("t a y l o r s w i f t"). The suit may test just what degree of similarity to an artist's voice or style is fair, and what crosses a line into unlawful imitation. In a recent test of the service by The New York Times, a request for a "1970s folk-rock ballad in Neil Young style" yielded a pop-up message that read: "We don't reference artists directly, so we've replaced your prompt with similar styles you might like." In his blog post, Mr. Shulman said the company used certain "training strategies" to reduce the risk of the system generating "unauthorized reproductions." "For example," he continued, "we intentionally chose not to use artist names in our training metadata because our goal is to help people create original songs -- not music that sounds like existing artists."

Jason Isbell's Suno lawsuit takes aim beyond AI copyright

The lawsuit takes an unusual approach, arguing that the AI music company exploited musicians' identities rather than simply infringing their copyrights. Musician Jason Isbell is leading a group of artists suing AI music generator Suno, alleging the company has misappropriated and exploited their identities. The group, which also includes Cracker and Camper Van Beethoven frontman David Lowery, Texas blues singer-songwriter Guy Forsyth, and saxophonist Eduardo Calle, has filed suit in U.S. District Court in Massachusetts. The artists say Suno lets users generate music that sounds like an artist's work, effectively stealing individual styles. It's an unusual suit in that it focuses on identity rather than copyright. And it approaches that argument in an unusual fashion, opening not with the legalese or direct accusations typically found in a court filing, but with an essay on the Borg, one of the major villains in Star Trek: The Next Generation. "The Borg are one of science fiction's most terrifying villains, representing the ultimate violation of individual identity and autonomy," it reads. "Autonomy is consumed and repurposed in the service of a cold machine intelligence that feels nothing for what it has taken." The case against the "Borg Collective" The filing eventually gets to the heart of its argument, alleging that Suno lets users copy an artist's style without permission and without compensating those artists. And yes, it ties those two topics together. "Suno possesses something uncomfortably like the Borg Collective itself: a vast database of tokens, each capturing the identifying attributes of musicians, organized into formulas whose very existence is defined by the identities Suno ingested" it reads. "Jason Isbell's musical identity does not cease to be his property merely because sophisticated technology is involved." The plaintiffs are seeking class-action status for their complaint, as well as unspecified damages.

Jason Isbell Claims Suno Used Artists' Identities to Train AI 'Without Consent' in New Lawsuit

Jason Isbell and several other musicians have filed a lawsuit against Suno, accusing the AI music giant of training its models on the identities of popular artists. While Suno and other AI companies have faced (and in some cases settled) litigation over their alleged use of copyrighted music to train their models, this lawsuit centers on alleged violations of right-of-publicity laws. Filed in Massachusetts federal court and obtained by Rolling Stone, the lawsuit claims that Suno "encoded" the identities of countless artists into its AI model "without consent, and now exploits those identities" for its own "considerable commercial benefit." To back up its claims, the lawsuit is filled with alleged examples of how typing an artist's name into Suno can generate songs, descriptions, and graphics that evoke the real artist's identity. The suit also suggests that supposed guardrails meant to deter this kind of prompting are easy to skirt. "Suno knows the commercial value of a machine that can conjure up a beloved musician's identity simply by invoking their name," the lawsuit reads, adding: "Many musicians sell their rights to specific recordings. However, the identity right belongs to the performer regardless of who owns any copyright in an underlying recording unless the identity right is separately licensed, typically for merchandise under the artist's control. This lawsuit seeks to recover the value of those misappropriated identities and to stop their ongoing commercial exploitation." The suit's claims rest on the allegation that Suno took the identifying attributes of particular musicians and turned them into "tokens," which could then be used to generate sound and descriptions reminiscent of the artist's actual work. For instance, prompting Suno with "Jason Isbell" allegedly "produced an Americana song called 'Paper Bell,' imitating Isbell's characteristic clear male vocals and country twang. Suno described it as 'contemporary Americana singer-songwriter with fingerpicked acoustic guitar' and provided an image of a paper bell with a church and trees in the background, evoking a country scene." (As of publication, "Paper Bell," as well as many of the other AI songs generated for the lawsuit, are still available on Suno.) The lawsuit also includes alleged examples describing what happened when other notable artists were used as prompts. "Buddy Guy" led to the creation of a song called "Stone Blues in My Shoes," which was paired with a description that read in part, "vintage electric Chicago blues." A "Carly Simon" prompt generated a song described as "soft 70s confessional pop." And entering "Less Than Jake" created a song called "Parking Lot Anthem" that was described as "ska-punk with fast offbeat guitar chops, jumping baseline, and punchy two-step drums." Suno allegedly even generated album art "invoking the surreal, comic book art" of actual Less Than Jake album covers. Last month, Suno CEO Mikey Shulman appeared to address this issue in a blog post, writing: "Unlike many AI music platforms, we've never allowed prompts for specific artists or copyrighted songs. Instead, when a prompt references a specific artist, we remove the artist's name and redirect the request toward descriptive musical characteristics." But the suit claims that these filters are easy to sidestep. One way is allegedly using an artist's real name instead of their stage name. Prompting Suno with Common's real name -- Lonnie Rashid Lynn -- produced tracks that allegedly captured the Chicago rapper's "more poetic, reflective, socially conscious hip-hop, relying on samples of jazz and soul music." And, the suit claims, users can successfully prompt Suno with the names of some of the biggest artists in the world -- including Taylor Swift, Bad Bunny, and Bruno Mars -- if they just add a space between every letter of the artist's name. For instance, entering "m i c h a e l j a c k s o n" purportedly led to the creation of two songs called "Glovebox Moonwalk." "Both songs," the suit reads, "are described as '1980s pop-funk dance track[s],' and include a photo of a white glove. Additionally, both the moonwalk and the glove feature in the lyrics. With his name alone, the Michael Jackson experience relies on two of his most iconic associated attributes: the moonwalk and the single white glove." Along with Isbell, the lead plaintiffs in the case are David Lowery, who makes music as Camper Van Beethoven; singer-songwriter Guy Forsyth; and prominent jazz saxophonist Ed Calle. Reps for Suno did not immediately return Rolling Stone's request for comment.

Country Star Jason Isbell Files Class Action Lawsuit Against Suno

Jason Isbell has filed a class action lawsuit against Suno, with the country rocker accusing the prominent AI music generation platform of letting users rip off artists' musical likeness without permission. In the suit, filed in federal court on Monday, Isbell and fellow musician plaintiffs David Lowery, Guy Forsyth and Eduardo Calle liken Suno to The Borg out of Star Trek, quoting the villainous cybernetic collective's famed "resistance is futile" catchphrase and referencing a scene in which The Borg remakes Captain Kirk into a machine. "Suno built and trained a model to index musicians by name," the complaint said. "It encoded musicians' identities into its AI model to create its commercial product without consent, and now exploits those identities by publicly using musicians' names to Suno's considerable commercial benefit. Typing in a musician's name creates a musician-based channel with a song, description, and graphic invoking the musician's identity. Suno knows the commercial value of a machine that can conjure up a beloved musician's identity simply by invoking their name. The company thus encourages its paid marketing partners to advertise this capability, without the consent of the musicians it invokes, while doing only enough to give Suno plausible deniability." Isbell's suit is just the latest against Suno, as the company also faces legal action from the likes of Universal Music Group, Sony Music Group and Round Hill Music on allegations of mass copyright infringement. (Warner Music Group, the smallest of the big three record labels, also previously sued Suno, though the company settled and entered into a partnership with Suno late last year.) This latest suit differs than the previously filed claims though, focusing on likeness rather than on the copyrights themselves. "Many musicians sell their rights to specific recordings," the suit said. "However, the identity right belongs to the performer regardless of who owns any copyright in an underlying recording unless the identity right is separately licensed, typically for merchandise under the artist's control. This lawsuit seeks to recover the value of those misappropriated identities and to stop their ongoing commercial exploitation." A spokesperson for Suno rebuked the claims in the new suit, saying in a statement that "we believe these claims are without merit and we intend to defend against them." "Suno exists to help people create new, original music, not to trade on anyone's name," the spokesperson said. "We stand by the many protections we have put into place across the platform, including blocking prompts for specific artists' names or copyrighted songs. We also work with third party technology providers to screen uploaded audio files and lyrics for potential unauthorized use of artists' work."