The collecting society GEMA filed a lawsuit against Suno Inc. on January 21, 2025. GEMA accuses the US company of having processed protected recordings of well-known songs from GEMA's repertoire in the AI audio tool Suno without paying remuneration.
AI training without financial participation of the authors?
GEMA represents the copyrights of around 95,000 members in Germany (composers, lyricists, music publishers) as well as over two million rights holders from all over the world. This makes it one of the world's largest authors' societies for musical works.
The Suno music tool makes it possible to create playable audio content using simple commands (prompts). Anyone using the premium version of the AI tool must pay a subscription fee to Suno Inc.
According to GEMA, it was able to document that the AI tool Suno also outputs copyright-infringing content. The melody, harmony and rhythm of this content is said to largely correspond to world-famous works whose authors GEMA represents.
Among others, songs by Alphaville (Forever Young), Kristina Bach (Atemlos), Lou Bega (Mambo No. 5), Frank Farian (Daddy Cool) and Modern Talking (Cheri Cheri Lady) are said to be affected. In these and numerous other cases, the AI tool is said to have generated audio content that is deceptively similar to the original songs.
In its lawsuit, GEMA accuses Suno Inc. of systematically using GEMA's repertoire for the training of its music tool and now exploiting it commercially without giving the authors of the works a financial share. GEMA is seeking to enforce the rights of its members by filing a lawsuit against the AI provider Suno Inc. with the Munich Regional Court.
Lawsuit filed against OpenAI in November
GEMA filed a lawsuit against OpenAI with the Munich Regional Court back in November 2024. It accuses the company of reproducing protected song lyrics by GEMA members in the AI tool ChatGPT. Here, too, no licenses had been acquired and the authors of the works used had not been remunerated.
With the current lawsuit, GEMA is now extending its activities to its core business, the licensing of playable music titles. In the USA, the AI tool from Suno Inc. is already the subject of a lawsuit by the music industry; in Europe, GEMA's lawsuit is the first against one of the leading providers of AI music tools.
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Opt-out declaration for AI training permissible?
As recently as September 2024, the Hamburg Regional Court ruled (judgment of 27.09.2024, case no. 310 O 227/23) that the creation of AI training datasets is permitted as text and data mining under Section 60d of the German Copyright Act (UrhG). This refers to the systematic searching of the internet in order to obtain information, in particular about patterns, trends and correlations.
However, GEMA points out that it had already declared an opt-out on behalf of its members in accordance with Section 44 b UrhG in May 2022. With this reservation of use, an act of reproduction for text and data mining can be excluded.
However, it is disputed whether a declaration in "natural language" is also sufficient for a machine-readable reservation of use, as required by Section 44b UrhG and Art. 4 para. 3 DSM Directive. The Regional Court of Hamburg affirms this in its decision. According to another legal opinion, only those reservations of use that prohibit use for training purposes by means of a technical format such as robot.txt should be considered machine-readable.
GEMA demands appropriate participation of authors for AI training
The collecting society hopes that the lawsuits against Suno AI and Open AI will result in an appropriate share for the authors concerned in the use of their copyrighted works for the purposes of generative AI.
The lawsuits are also intended to serve as test cases to clarify numerous legal issues. At the heart of the matter is the crucial question of whether the training and subsequent use of the generated content is possible free of charge and without the consent of the rights holders. The verdict is also likely to be eagerly awaited by other sectors.
Source: Press release GEMA - "Fair remuneration demanded: GEMA files suit against Suno Inc."
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