Google Moves to Dismiss Artists’ Lyria 3 AI Training Lawsuit

Google has asked a federal court to dismiss a copyright lawsuit accusing it of using independent musicians’ works to train its Lyria 3 AI music model.

Quick recap:

• The class action was brought by a collective of independent musicians in March, including members of bands Attack the Sound and Directrix.

• The plaintiffs allege that Google pulled their copyrighted recordings from YouTube, which it owns, to train its AI models without authorization or compensation.

Google’s motion:

• Google claims that when the artists uploaded their music to YouTube and accepted its Terms of Service, they granted Google “a broad license to use” the content “in connection with Google’s business.”

• It asserts that the license covers AI training, amongst other things.

• It further argued that the plaintiffs lacked standing to bring their claims under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, saying that although they allege Lyria was trained on their recordings, they cannot show any infringing output or that any copyright management information was altered or removed.

• Google also invoked the recent Cox vs. Sony decision in stating that the action “contains no allegations that Google intentionally induced users to generate infringing songs, as necessary to establish contributory copyright infringement under recent Supreme Court authority.”