Technology

SOCAN, Canada’s non-profit music rights organization, is suing AI music generation platform Suno, accusing it of infringing on the rights of more than 150 Canadian artists without their consent or providing proper compensation.

“SOCAN has a responsibility to act when the rights of music creators and publishers are put at risk. The evidence shows that the Suno platform has generated and streamed outputs that copy works in our repertoire, and that cannot go unchallenged,” SOCAN CEO Jennifer Brown said in a press release on Wednesday. “Innovation can’t come at the expense of human creativity. The future of music must belong to the people who make it.”

The release also said that the legal action is a “necessary and proactive step to ensure that human music creation is valued, respected, and compensated.” The organization added that it expects more violations to come to light as litigation moves forward.

Alongside the lawsuit, which was filed in Canadian federal court on Wednesday, SOCAN has launched a website comparing Suno outputs to songs by Canadian artists like Tom Cochrane and Avril Lavigne. The Suno clips play nearly note-for-note and word-for-word replicas of popular songs like “Life is a Highway.” The lawsuit’s claims have yet to be proven in court. BetaKit has reached out to Suno for comment.