Photo Credit: The American Dollar (Facebook)
Suno faces a copyright infringement lawsuit filed by ambient instrumental duo The American Dollar, alleging the platform ingested 236 of their songs to train its AI models.
Poseidon Wave Media, the company representing ambient instrumental duo The American Dollar, has filed a lawsuit against AI music platform Suno, alleging the platform ingested 236 of the duo’s sound recordings and compositions to train its AI models without authorization. They’re seeking up to $150,000 per track infringement, which amounts to over $35 million.
The duo, whose music has been featured by major brands like Apple and in shows like “CSI: Miami,” claims that the resulting flood of AI content has acted as a major market disruptor, decimating their primary livelihood by slashing their licensing revenue by nearly 80% since Suno’s public launch. Their complaint was filed in the US District Court for the Southern District of New York on Tuesday, May 12.
“In fact, there is a clear line of demarcation in revenue fall-off dated from the public launch of Suno’s AI service,” the lawsuit reads. “Defendant’s Suno AI product, […] has acted as a major disruptor in the sector, and plaintiff’s licensing revenue has been nearly eliminated since the first version of Suno AI was made available to the public.”
To support their claim, the duo used a Suno Pro account to input text prompts specifically referencing their track titles, which successfully generated outputs mimicking their unique musical architecture. As a result, they allege that their music was ingested into Suno’s training database, leading to competing tracks entering the market carried by their original work.
“The decades it has taken for plaintiff to develop and refine their process and methods of music creation, and the weeks to month spent by plaintiff in developing each single original musical piece, has been co-opted by defendant and used to supplant plaintiff’s original musical works in the marketplace,” the filing states.
“The pervasive replication of key elements in the Copyrighted Tracks by Suno AI can only be explained by defendant’s ingestion of plaintiff’s Copyrighted Tracks without license or authority,” the complaint continues. “If left unmoored from established and longstanding legal constraints, such products will supplant, rather than support, genuine human creativity.”
In all, the lawsuit covers 236 sound recordings and compositions across 64 US Copyright Registrations. Poseidon Wave Media is seeking a declaration of willful infringement, a preliminary and permanent injunction, and damages of up to $150,000 per work infringed, or actual damages and Suno’s profits from infringement. They have also demanded a trial by jury.
