Metro Boomin‘s “BBL Drizzy” beat that was used to diss Drake has led to a number of lawsuits being filed against artificial intelligence companies.
AI firms Suno and Udio have been sued by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) and major record labels Sony Music, Warner Music Group and Universal Music Group over alleged copyright infringement.
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Udio created “BBL Drizzy,” which was then sampled by Metro for his instrumental diss track, with the original song being artificially created including the vocals.
Metro is not named as a defendant in the lawsuits and it is believed that he was not aware the sample was AI-generated when he used it.
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The two companies are accused of using copyrighted material owned by Sony, Warner and Universal to train their AI models to generate music.
“Building and operating [these services] requires at the outset copying and ingesting massive amounts of data to ‘train’ a software ‘model’ to generate outputs,” the labels’ attorneys claim. “For [these services], this process involved copying decades worth of the world’s most popular sound recordings and then ingesting those copies [to] generate outputs that imitate the qualities of genuine human sound recordings.”
The lawsuit is seeking an injunction against Suno and Udio to stop them from using existing copyrighted music to train their programs, as well as damages from infractions that have already been committed.
The lawsuit also contains purported evidence that Suno and Udio used copyrighted recordings from a number of artists across the three record labels.
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They claim they have evidence of the AI programs copying the producer tags of Cash Money AP and Jason Derulo, as well as vocals from the likes of Michael Jackson and Mariah Carey.
Suno released a statement in response to the lawsuit that said: “Suno’s mission is to make it possible for everyone to make music. Our technology is transformative; it is designed to generate completely new outputs, not to memorize and regurgitate pre-existing content. That is why we don’t allow user prompts that reference specific artists.
“We would have been happy to explain this to the corporate record labels that filed this lawsuit (and in fact, we tried to do so), but instead of entertaining a good faith discussion, they’ve reverted to their old lawyer-led playbook. Suno is built for new music, new uses, and new musicians. We prize originality.”
The RIAA took issue with this statement, with a spokesperson countering: “If there is any takeaway from Udio’s meandering ‘response,’ it is that Udio is attempting to construct an alternate reality where being pro-artist means stealing artists’ work for profit.
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“In the reality everyone else is living in, artist advocate groups oppose what Udio is doing and strongly support these lawsuits. Supporting real creativity means getting permission before using someone’s work and developing technology that partners with and supports human artists instead of cutting them out and replacing them.
“Music companies have already struck multiple partnerships with startups, entrepreneurs, and others with responsible applications of AI.”
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They added: “There is one surprising note of agreement: Udio now seems to admit their model copied ‘a large collection of recorded music.’ That’s a startling admission of illegal and unethical conduct, and they should be held accountable.”
