AI can make up songs now, but who owns the copyright? The answer is complicated

Artificial intelligence (AI) text and image generation tools have now been around for a while, but in recent weeks, apps for making AI-generated music have reached consumers as well.

Just like other generative AI tools, the two products – Suno and Udio (and others likely to come) – work by turning a user’s prompt into output. For example, prompting for “a rock punk song about my dog eating my homework” on Suno will produce an audio file (see below) that combines instruments and vocals. The output can be downloaded as an MP3 file.

The underlying AI draws on unknown data sets to generate the music. Users have the option of prompting the AI for lyrics or writing their own lyrics, although some apps advise the AI works best when generating both.

But who, if anyone, owns the resulting sounds? For anyone using these apps, this is an important question to consider. And the answer is not straightforward.