Two major music publishing groups have jointly filed a lawsuit against Anthropic, accusing the company of "one of the largest and most blatant ongoing thefts of intellectual property in history." We reached out to Anthropic for comment on the lawsuit and will update the story when we hear back. Concord Music Group and Universal Music Group were seeking more than 3 billion in damages with the lawsuit. Anthropic ended up settling that case for a record-setting 1.5 billion.

The Australian Recording Industry Association announced today that any tracks wholly generated with AI will not be eligible for inclusion on the nation's music charts. The Code of Practice for the charts will allow songs that use generative AI to be counted, but only if the track in question "is substantially human made" and "raises no stream or chart manipulation concerns." These rules will apply to the charts beginning this Friday. Tracks not eligible for the charts will also not be able to win an ARIA Award. "The ARIA Charts will always remain a transparent measurement of the music Australia consumes, but a chart that rewards unlicensed AI output would undercut the very basis of the recorded music we exist to represent," said ARIA CEO, Annabelle Herd.

The AI music generator Suno has announced that it will start watermarking songs created on its platform, amid a number of legal battles and increasing pressure from the music industry. Suno co-founder and CEO Mikey Shulman said in a blog post that the platform's new "transparency tools" will include some kind of labelling system that shows people if a song has been generated on Suno when it appears on another platform. Details are vague, but Shulman said his company will adopt "new audio watermarking and fingerprinting technology" that helps it resist AI fraud more effectively. It sounds similar in principle to Google's SynthID, which allows AI-generated content to be traced back to its origin even after editing or compression has taken place, but it's not clear exactly how Suno's solution will work. Shulman did add that he and his company believe that it should ultimately be at the discretion of artists and platforms to decide whether they communicate when something was made with AI.

Warner Music Group (WMG) will begin an artificial intelligence (AI) music venture with technology start-up Suno - a year after it sued the firm in a landmark case. As part of the settlement agreement struck between the two firms, Warner will let users create AI-generated music on Suno using the voices, names and likeness of artists who opt-in to the programme. The record label, which represents artists like Dua Lipa, Coldplay and Ed Sheeran, was among several music giants like Sony Music that sued Suno and a similar platform called Udio. AI-generated content has been controversial, with many artists voicing concerns that it could undermine human songwriters. Starting next year, Suno will roll out new advanced and licensed models to its generative-AI music platform, which allows users to create music based on simple descriptions, said Warner in a statement .

Spotify is rolling out a Music Pro tier later this year that will give users access to higher-quality audio and remixing tools, according to Bloomberg. The tier will reportedly cost users 6 per month on top of their 12 Premium subscription, but they'll be priced differently across regions and will be cheaper in less-developed markets. Many long-time Spotify subscribers, however, will probably say that they'll believe it when they see it. The service teased a high-fidelity streaming option way back in 2017 and had confirmed that it was working to provide users with access to lossless audio in 2021. Several reports about the feature's availability had come out over the years after the company's confirmation. In 2024, Bloomberg also reported that HiFi streaming is expected to arrive before the year ended as a 5 add-on.

Thanks to a string of leaks and Google's own teases -- usually following said leaks -- we know we'll get the official reveal of the Pixel 9 lineup. The Pixel 9 and 9 Pro will be straight-up successors to the Pixel 8 and 8 Pro but rumors suggest Google will add a Pixel 9 Pro XL, with a larger screen. All three of the phones are expected to have a redesigned, chonky camera module and possibly even a new chipset. Alongside all those phones, we're expecting a lot more news on Gemini, Google's flavor of AI powered assistant, and Android 15. More leaks and rumors point to updated smartwatches and wireless buds too.

When most tech companies are challenged with a lawsuit, the expected defense is to deny wrongdoing. To give a reasonable explanation of why the business' actions were not breaking any laws. Music AI startups Udio and Suno have gone for a different approach: admit to doing exactly what you were sued for. And that's because its training data "includes essentially all music files of reasonable quality that are accessible on the open internet," which likely include millions of illegal copies of songs. But the company is taking the line that its scraping falls under the umbrella of fair use.

AI companies have pillaged the internet for training data, and many websites and data set owners have started restricting the ability to scrape their websites. We've also seen a backlash against the AI sector's practice of indiscriminately scraping online data, in the form of users opting out of making their data available for training and lawsuits from artists, writers, and the New York Times, claiming that AI companies have taken their intellectual property without consent or compensation. My colleague James O'Donnell dissects the lawsuits in his story and points out that these lawsuits could determine the future of AI music. But this moment also sets an interesting precedent for all of generative AI development. Thanks to the scarcity of high-quality data and the immense pressure and demand to build even bigger and better models, we're in a rare moment where data owners actually have some leverage.

Major music labels are taking on AI startups that they believe trained on their songs without paying. The filings against the AI companies reportedly demand injunctions against future use and damages of up to 150,000 per infringed work. The suits appear aimed at establishing licensed training as the only acceptable industry framework for AI moving forward -- while instilling fear in companies that train their models without consent. Suno AI and Udio AI (Uncharted Labs run the latter) are startups with software that generates music based on text inputs. The former is a partner of Microsoft for its CoPilot music generation tool.

The music industry has officially declared war on Suno and Udio, two of the most prominent AI music generators. The plaintiffs seek damages up to 150,000 per work infringed. The lawsuit against Suno is filed in Massachusetts, while the case against Udio's parent company Uncharted Inc. was filed in New York. Suno and Udio did not immediately respond to a request to comment. "Unlicensed services like Suno and Udio that claim it's'fair' to copy an artist's life's work and exploit it for their own profit without consent or pay set back the promise of genuinely innovative AI for us all," Recording Industry Association of America chairman and CEO Mitch Glazier said in a press release.