Round Hill sues Suno, Anthropic over AI training copyright

Round Hill Music, an independent music publisher owning rights to songs such as Bonnie Tyler's "Total Eclipse of the Heart" and the Goo Goo Dolls' "Iris," filed separate copyright infringement lawsuits on Monday, August 17, against artificial intelligence companies Suno and Anthropic. The suits, lodged in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, allege the firms illegally used hundreds of the company's compositions and recordings to train their AI models without permission or compensation.

The complaints name 500 songs as an initial example but state Round Hill plans to amend the cases to include potentially 10,000 or more works. The publisher argues the unauthorized use violates the Copyright Act and the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, seeking statutory damages that could total hundreds of millions of dollars and potentially approach or exceed $1 billion. "Copyrighted works have been used to build multibillion-dollar businesses," said Richard S. Busch, the attorney representing Round Hill, "while the songwriters and publishers who created the foundations of that value have received nothing."

In the case against Suno, which operates an AI-powered music...