German lawsuit tests copyright limits for AI music training
It's more than a copyright issue: The flood of AI-generated tracks is unfair competition for the original creators, says GEMA. A landmark European case in
It's more than a copyright issue: The flood of AI-generated tracks is unfair competition for the original creators, says GEMA. A landmark European case in AI music copyright law is set to reach a conclusion on July 31, as the Munich Regional Court is expected to deliver its verdict in the lawsuit brought by GEMA, Germany's music collecting society, against Suno AI, a US-based company that generates songs from text prompts. In the case filed in January 2025, GEMA argues that Suno trained its AI models on copyrighted music without obtaining licences or compensating its rights holders. The lawsuit is being closely watched, as it is one of the first major cases anywhere in the world to test how traditional copyright law applies to AI music training and AI-generated music outputs. Paul McCartney & Rosalia: Strategies for surviving AI music To view this video please enable JavaScript, and consider upgrading to a web browser that supports HTML5 video The proceedings could help determine whether AI music companies must obtain licenses before training their models on copyrighted songs and whether AI-generated music that closely resembles existing songs constitutes copyright infringement. "Our goal is not to clear Suno from the face of the earth, but obviously to get into licensing negotiations on an eye-to-eye level, which was not possible with Suno so far," explains GEMA CEO Tobias Holzmüller, who describes the company as "by far the largest and commercially most successful of all AI music models." Suno pursues "a much more aggressive business strategy as compared to others," he adds. Tobias Holzmüller, CEO of GEMA Image: Sebastian Linder The outcome of the lawsuit is also linked to another central question: How should creators be compensated when their music is used to train generative AI systems? At the forefront of heavily contested battle to protect artists' rights Last year, GEMA won a related case against OpenAI before the same court. It found that OpenAI unlawfully trained its AI models on copyrighted song lyrics and reproduced them via ChatGPT without authorization.
OpenAI was ordered to cease and desist from reproducing the works in the model, to disclose information and pay damages. But as the company pursues an appeal, the ruling remains non-final. In contrast to that decision, the current lawsuit does not focus on song lyrics, but on entire music pieces. One of the aspects that makes this lawsuit important is that it is not initiated by a private company or record label, but rather by a music collecting society, notes Martin Senftleben, professor of intellectual property law at the Amsterdam Law School. Such initiatives "are particularly important because, by definition, you could say that they're more inclusive," Senftleben tells DW. "You can become a GEMA member even if you're not a very well-known high-profile artist or composer. And that means there's a chance of bringing remuneration for AI users to a much broader group of rights holders." GEMA represents more than 95,000 composers, songwriters and music publishers in Germany, along with over 2 million rights holders worldwide. How did GEMA present its case? GEMA claims that Suno trained its AI on copyrighted music without permission or payment to songwriters, composers and publishers represented by the German music collecting society. GEMA also says that the US-based company is commercially benefiting from those works without compensating the artists. Suno's music creation platform generates songs through simple text prompts. Users can describe the mood, style or genre they desire and the system synthesizes a structured track — complete with lyrics, vocals and instrumentation — in under a minute. The songs that are produced by the AI system can be very similar to copyrighted songs. During the court proceedings, GEMA demonstrated this by prompting Suno AI to create tracks with the original lyrics of different popular songs in its repertoire, including "Forever Young" by Alphaville, "Mambo No. 5" by Lou Bega, "Daddy Cool" by Boney M., "Cheri Cheri Lady" by Modern Talking and "Atemlos durch die Nacht," written by Kristina Bach and popularized by Helene Fischer.
The BriefWire