Jason Isbell and other notable musicians have filed a class action lawsuit against Suno, the AI music-creating software, alleging the company uses musicians’ identities without their permission to generate music that copies their styles. Isbell, along with Camper Van Beethoven’s David Lowery, blues guitarist and songwriter Guy Forsyth, and jazz saxophonist Eduardo Calle filed the 84-page lawsuit in a Massachusetts federal court Monday and hit Suno with 17 claims that the company violated various state and territorial laws pertaining to personal publicity rights.
The lawsuit does not focus on musicians’ specific songs being ripped off. No copyright claims were alleged. What the complaint alleges is that Suno intentionally created a system that allows a musician’s name to be used as an AI prompt to generate music that lifts from the named artist.
Lawsuit Allegations
The lawsuit gave a dozen or more examples of putting in musicians’ names and Suno spitting out songs and even images that copy those musicians. Putting “Jason Isbell” into Suno created a song called “Paper Bell” that was described by the AI software as “contemporary Americana singer-songwriter with fingerpicked acoustic guitar” and contained a male voice with country twang imitating Isbell’s vocal elements. When “Camper Van Beethoven” was used as a prompt, Suno generated a song that it described as “quirky late-1980s alternative rock with folk-rock” with “occasional accordion and fiddle flourishes,” mimicking the band’s actual sound, according to the legal action.
Despite Suno’s claims to the contrary, the AI music creator not only allows prompting by musicians’ name, but it has built ways around its own filters which are meant to stop users from recreating music based on name alone, the lawsuit alleged.
AI Music Creation Controversy
A user can type in Taylor Swift’s name with spaces between each letter to create an AI-generated song that has all her characteristics, according to the complaint. The same is true for song titles. Putting “Smooth Criminal” into Suno created a Michael Jackson-like song complete with an image of a white glove for marketing purposes, the lawsuit said.
“Name responsiveness is a designed, systemic commercial feature of the platform — not an isolated technical artifact or unpredictable emergent behavior,” the legal document said. “The platform is built to identify musicians by name and generate identity-evocative output on command. This is its product.”
Isbell and his co-plaintiffs asked the court to certify that the lawsuit can continue as a class action, meaning it represents others across the country who aren’t named in the lawsuit but are affected by Suno. They also asked that the court make Suno pay money for publicity rights violations and take away profits the company earned from non-consensual use of musicians’ identities. They also requested that Suno pay for court and attorney fees. A trial by jury was requested by the musicians.
The use of AI in music is a simmering controversy that is poised to boil over. Recently Dr. Dre expressed his support of artificial intelligence to create music. On the other end, Daft Punk’s Thomas Bangalter talked about his view that the use of AI to create music is a shortcut that stunts the creative process. Other musicians and bands, like King Gizzard & the Lizard Wizard, are also dealing with AI clones of their music that add to the financial distress they face as well as the technology’s ability to create music with little effort that compete for streaming royalties.
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