Major record labels Sony Music, Universal Music Group and Warner Records sued artificial intelligence companies Suno and Udio on Monday (June 24), accusing them of committing mass copyright infringement by using the labels' recordings to train music-generating AI systems.

The companies copied music without permission to teach their systems to create music that will "directly compete with, cheapen, and ultimately drown out" human artists' work, according to federal lawsuits filed against Udio in New York and Suno in Massachusetts.

"Our technology is transformative; it is designed to generate completely new outputs, not to memorise and regurgitate pre-existing content," Suno CEO Mikey Shulman said in a statement.

Spokespeople for Udio did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the complaints.

The complaints said Suno and Udio users have been able to recreate elements of songs including The Temptations' My Girl, Mariah Carey's All I Want for Christmas Is You and James Brown's I Got You (I Feel Good), and could generate vocals that are "indistinguishable" from musicians such as Michael Jackson, Bruce Springsteen and ABBA.

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