The grueling fight over who profits from AI music

The music industry is facing a high-stakes fight over how money is handled as generative AI music tools like Suno and Udio let users create full songs from text prompts. The legal battle is moving beyond whether AI can produce music to the central economic question: when AI models train on millions of tracks, who deserves payment? Reporting by Alex Reisner of The Atlantic, via his AI Watchdog project, has helped artists identify their work in training datasets. Suno has acknowledged in court filings that its data included “essentially all” open-internet music files. The next dispute is what training materials were used and whether copying is lawful.