The Society of Composers, Authors and Music Publishers of Canada (SOCAN) is taking its battle over artificial intelligence and copyright to court, announcing today it has filed a lawsuit against AI music company Suno Inc. over its alleged unauthorized use and reproduction of musical works represented by the Canadian performing rights organization.
In a statement Wednesday, SOCAN said it has identified Suno-generated outputs that are identical or similar to songs in its repertoire, notably songs by by artists like Avril Lavigne and Joni Mitchell. The organization says the lawsuit includes a sample of 150 publicly available Suno outputs that it believes infringe the performing rights attached to those works.
According to the release, Suno has built its generative AI platform by training its models on music files readily accessible online without obtaining the necessary permissions or licences. The organization alleges that the resulting technology can generate and publicly stream music that replicates existing compositions, including works represented by SOCAN members.
The lawsuit focuses on Suno's activities in Canada, alleging that making the platform available to Canadian users, generating outputs that replicate songs in SOCAN's repertoire and streaming those outputs constitutes infringement of performing rights.
“SOCAN has a responsibility to act when the rights of music creators and publishers are put at risk,” CEO Jennifer Brown said in the statement. “Innovation can’t come at the expense of human creativity.”
SOCAN's chief legal officer and general counsel Andrea Kokonis said the organization is seeking to establish that existing copyright protections remain applicable as the technology develops. “Our evidence is clear, and so is our objective: to establish that AI companies must respect the rights of music creators and publishers,” Kokonis said.
The organization declined to comment beyond what is contained in the court record. Suno has not yet publicly responded to the allegations in SOCAN's announcement.
