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September 1, 2025
Suno, an AI music generator, is challenging copyright infringement claims from independent artists with a bold legal stance that will change the debate over AI music. The class action lawsuit, filed by aptly named indie artist Tony Justice and his 5th Wheel Records in June 2025, focuses on the impact of AI training on independent creators. In a motion to dismiss filed in federal court on August 18th, Suno argues that the lawsuit “fails as a matter of law” and should be thrown out. The company claims that music produced by Suno does not sample existing recordings, regardless of what works were used to train its AI model.
This presents a potentially game-changing legal approach: Suno argues that even if its AI learns from copyrighted songs, the sounds it creates are entirely new and cannot infringe on existing recordings under copyright law. The motion represents the most recent development in ongoing legal disputes over AI training using copyrighted music, with Suno already defending itself against a separate lawsuit filed in June 2024 by major labels Universal Music Group, Sony Music Entertainment, and Warner Music Group. That lawsuit, backed by the RIAA, is still active and centers exclusively on fair use arguments related to AI training.
Suno contends that the lawsuit filed by indie artists contains several legally flawed claims. The motion argues that this case is a mimic of the RIAA lawsuit, introducing a problematic new legal theory. Unlike the RIAA case, which focuses on the legality of AI training practices, Justice and other artists assert that certain songs generated by Suno’s AI (‘outputs’) closely copy their original recordings. Central to Suno’s argument is Section 114(b) of the Copyright Act, which provides distinct protections for sound recordings compared to other copyrighted works.
Suno goes further by stating that the plaintiffs must allege that the output didn't just sound similar or even identical to the original, but that it actually included a ‘sample’ from it, which is the way the music generator currently works. It does not piece together new sounds; it creates new ones. They went on to say that “the only way a new recording can infringe the rights in a pre-existing one [under the US Copyright Act] is if it borrows the actual sounds of the original… that is not how Suno’s tool works at all, as Plaintiffs well know. No Suno output contains anything like a ‘sample’ from a recording in the training set, so no Suno output can infringe the rights in anything in the training set, as a matter of law."
This final point is the foundation of Suno’s confident legal stance that its AI-generated music does not infringe on existing sound recordings, regardless of how similar the outputs may seem to copyrighted works, or what music was used to train its AI. Suno’s filing also readily shares recent victories for AI companies in federal courts related to fair use, noting that nine days after this Complaint was filed, the first federal court to consider this broad issue decided on summary judgment that using millions of copyrighted books for AI training was fair use. It also mentions the June 2025 ruling in Bartz v. Anthropic PBC, where a California federal judge recognized AI training as fair use, along with a similar decision in Kadrey v. Meta Platforms.
If significant damages are awarded against Suno for copyright infringement, licensing costs for competing AI music companies will increase substantially as record labels leverage their stronger negotiating power to demand higher fees, upfront payments, and stricter compliance terms. Licensing packages would likely include cash payments for previous use, ongoing royalties derived from the model's output, and occasionally, minority stakes for rights holders, similar to the arrangements labels adopted with streaming services like Spotify.
If labels do win a large payout from Suno, they will move quickly to demand flat training fees from rival AI music firms. How quickly? If I were a betting man, I’d lay down a tenner on just a few months following the ruling.