Suno is moving to dismiss a class-action lawsuit filed by Americana singer Jason Isbell, arguing that the company's actions are not unlawful. In its first response to the case on Tuesday, Suno pushed back against Isbell’s allegations that the AI music generator allows users to produce tracks based on musicians' identities.
Isbell joined musicians David Lowery, Guy Forsyth, and Eduardo Calle in filing the federal lawsuit in August. The plaintiffs are seeking a class action, alleging that Suno violates state publicity laws and exploits artists' identities when users request tracks that sound similar to a specific artist's output.
Suno attorney Andrew Gass argued in a filing that laws cannot govern publicity in such a manner. Gass compared the use of prompts to when musicians ask human producers to mimic another artist’s tone. He stated, “When people describe styles of music, they often use artists’ names as shorthand for the genre they perform in. The Complaint in this case turns on the premise that the law somehow condemns that universal practice.”
Gass further asserted that Congress intentionally chose not to grant intellectual property protection to artistic styles to allow new creators to build on existing genres. He argued that the lawsuit's theory would create a "shadow state law IP regime" that would conflict with the federal regime in place for over two centuries.
The lawsuit filed by the Isbell group is distinct from other litigation against Suno because it focuses on identity rather than copyright. The plaintiffs claim that Suno retains "voiceprints" of artists that users can access by bypassing guardrails. They allege users can reach these "prints" by using specific prompts that avoid using an artist's name directly, such as asking for a specific "tone and phrasing," using real names instead of stage names, or adding spaces between letters of an artist's name.
Suno denied these claims, stating that invoking an artist's name to describe a genre is protected by the First Amendment. The Tuesday filing stated, “There is nothing unlawful about that. No state confers a right of publicity that prohibits a musician in a studio from saying to their producer, ‘let’s go for something here with more of a Jason Isbell vibe,’ and actually achieving that result without infringing any copyright or creating a likelihood of confusion over the identity of the performer. And what Suno does, by Plaintiffs’ own account, is no different.”
