Major record labels are suing the AI company behind “BBL Drizzy”

Earlier this year, Metro Boomin went and made some drums – and in doing so, helped to usher in a new era of music.

The famed producer remixed and released a track called “BBL Drizzy” on May 5, 2024, in response to being dissed by Drake. The interesting thing: the voice used in the original “BBL Drizzy” track was created by someone named King Willonius using Udio, an AI music startup founded by former Google DeepMind engineers – making Metro Boomin one of the first major producers to sample an AI-generated track.

Now, Udio and Suno, another big name in generative AI music-making, are being sued by a group of record labels that include the big three – Universal Music Group, Sony Music, and Warner Records – for allegedly violating copyright law “en masse.”

• The labels say musical artists across genres and eras had their work used to train the companies’ AI models, which create music tracks based on text inputs, without consent. They’re seeking damages of up to $150,000 per work, along with other fees.

This isn’t entirely unexpected. In a Rolling Stone profile written about Suno in March, the startup’s execs and early investors acknowledged the possibility of lawsuits from record labels. AI companies are also facing copyright infringement lawsuits across numerous other industries, including news, book publishing, photography, and more.