A German court has addressed the copyright implications of training generative AI systems on protected musical works, focusing in particular on the impact of AI-generated outputs on the market for original works. The court found that the outputs generated by Suno’s music generator showed substantial similarities to the works at issue and could operate as substitutes for the original works, negatively affecting their economic value.
The decision also distinguished the case from Google Books, emphasizing that, unlike limited search snippets, the AI-generated outputs could be accessed, stored, published, reproduced and further modified by users. The case highlights the growing litigation risks surrounding the use of copyrighted works to train generative AI models, particularly where generated outputs are sufficiently similar to protected works to compete with or substitute their legitimate exploitation.
