David Lowery performing live. Photo Credit: Zopheus
We’ve been hearing plenty about Suno’s allegedly infringing training process and outputs. But what about its alleged publicity and likeness rights violations? Now, the platform is facing a sweeping class action for allegedly capitalizing on “musician-specific identifying attributes” without authorization.
Country star Jason Isbell, activist artist David Lowery, blues singer-songwriter Guy Forsyth, and veteran jazz saxophonist Ed Calle submitted the 84-page suit to a Massachusetts federal court yesterday.
Despite its well-known plaintiffs, the complaint emphasizes off the bat a goal of ultimately bringing on creatives from across the music world. As described by the legal text, Suno was designed “with the capability to use musicians’ names as a retrieval key” – so that “[e]ntering a musician’s name causes the system to generate a musician-based output.”
Moreover, despite the Cambridge-headquartered defendant’s purported claims that “users are blocked from using a specific name as a prompt,” one can easily bypass the guardrail, according to the document.
“When it functions at all, Suno’s purported filter is easily defeated by inserting a space between each letter of a name—an alteration a human reader, and Suno’s own underlying model, still recognizes as referring to the same person,” a relevant line reads.
Heavy on examples of the alleged workarounds in action, the suit proceeds to underscore that Suno “is built to identify musicians by name and generate identity-evocative output on command.”
This central contention – that the platform is allegedly leveraging “musicians’ identities because doing so increases the usefulness, appeal, and commercial value of its product” in the form of outputs containing distinguishing characteristics – is important on several levels.
First, in the filing parties’ view, the publicity rights in question are unrelated to copyright ownership (and the presence of protectable elements in outputs themselves). “The rights asserted here do not arise from ownership of any copyright and do not depend upon who owns, licenses, or is otherwise entitled to exploit any particular work.
“Plaintiffs claim no ownership of country music, of Americana music, or of any genre, style, or musical idea, and nothing in this Complaint asserts a right to prevent anyone—human or machine—from making blues or any other style of music. The claim is narrower and older than that: no one may commercially exploit another’s right of publicity in their name and identity,” the text proceeds.
Building on the point, the suit explores the position that commercially prominent and lesser-known professionals alike are therefore entitled to relief.
“The musician need not be a superstar to have their identity appropriated,” the complaint indicates. “In an important sense, the relevant class is self-defining. If Suno has operationalized a musician’s name so that the name activates performer-specific capabilities within its platform, Suno’s own conduct demonstrates that the identity is sufficiently known and valuable to be useful to Suno.
“The musician may be a global star or a session player whose name is familiar mainly to musicians, collectors, or people who read liner notes on their parents’ vinyl collection.”
Consequently, that the case’s proposed classes are sweeping probably won’t come as a surprise.
Alleging violations of Illinois’ Right of Publicity Act, California’s common-law publicity right, and similar laws in a number of different states, the suit aims to establish subclasses covering various musicians (and musicians’ estates) “whose names are or have been accepted as prompts in Suno.”
Specifically in Illinois, another subclass would extend to all musicians “who created sound recordings containing voiceprints or vocal identifiers that Suno collected, captured, stored, or used without obtaining informed written consent as required under the Illinois Biometric Information Privacy Act.”
What of professionals whose music has already been licensed to Suno?
Well, “the claims of class members whose recordings are subject to such an agreement are asserted” for alleged conduct preceding the deal and, more generally, for the lack of expressly licensed publicity, identity, and biometric rights.
With that, Suno is now staring down industry actions from the non-Warner majors, indie artists, Gerencia, Round Hill, and others. Nevertheless, the past month has also seen the cash-flush startup roll out bolstered safeguards, quietly resolve multiple complaints, and score a high-profile licensing pact.