Royalty and Rights Frontier for AI Generated Works

Three separate institutional actors have staked out formal positions on AI-generated music since 2024: the United States Copyright Office through a multi-part study, the Recording Industry Association of America through regulatory filings and litigation management, and the federal court system through two landmark copyright infringement cases. None of these developments is final. All of them are shaping the landscape that working musicians and rights holders are navigating right now.

This article covers what each institution has said, in its own language, and what it means in practical terms.

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#### The Copyright Office Study: Three Parts, One Ongoing Question

The U.S. Copyright Office began a formal study of AI and copyright, collecting over 10,000 public comments. The study has produced three parts:

• Part 1 (published July 31, 2024): Addresses digital replicas.
• Part 2 (published January 29, 2025): Addresses the copyrightability of outputs created using generative AI.
• Part 3 (pre-publication version released May 9, 2025): Addresses generative AI training. A final version has not yet been published as of this article's date. The Copyright Office has stated that no substantive changes are expected in the analysis or conclusions.

The finding with the most direct relevance to musicians comes from Part 2. According to the Copyright Office's announcement of Part 2, the Office concludes that the outputs of generative AI can be protected by copyright only where a human author has determined sufficient expressive elements. The mere provision of prompts is not enough to establish copyrightability.

What does the Office say is enough? Copyright protection may apply when a human-authored work is perceptible in an AI output, when a human makes creative arrangements or modifications of the output, or when AI is used as a tool in a process that is primarily driven by human creativity. The use of AI to assist in creating a work does not by itself bar copyright protection. Nor does including AI-generated material in a larger human-generated work.

The Office also stated that the case has not been made for changes to existing law to provide additional protection for AI-generated outputs, meaning the current framework applies, with existing doctrines determining what qualifies.

For a foundational explanation of how music copyright works, see /definitions/.

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#### The RIAA's Position: Licenses First, Free Market Second

The RIAA, leading a coalition of ten music community organizations that included the Nashville Songwriters' Association International and the Recording Academy, filed comments with the Administration's AI Action Plan in March 2025.

According to the RIAA's published summary of that filing, the coalition's core positions are:

On training data: Before deploying AI systems, developers and deployers must first obtain appropriate licenses for any copyrighted works they use to train their models. The filing states the coalition opposes text-and-data mining exceptions that include copyrighted works, calling them a mechanism to take American content without compensation.

On name, image, likeness, and voice: The filing calls for appropriate authorization if AI developers and deployers use a person's name, image, likeness, or voice in connection with training their models.

On licensing structure: The RIAA advocates for free market licensing, meaning licenses for training on copyrighted works should be negotiated without regulation, in the marketplace, to establish fair value.

On copyright and human authorship: The filing states that copyright should protect only human expression and that machines cannot and should not have the same rights. The coalition cited the Copyright Office's Part 2 report as consistent with this position.

On transparency: The filing calls for adequate recordkeeping and transparency concerning AI training materials and algorithmic outputs.

The RIAA's position is that AI innovation and strong copyright protection are not mutually exclusive. The filing uses the phrase "not a zero-sum game."

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#### Federal Court: The Suno and Udio Cases

On June 24, 2024, the RIAA announced the filing of two copyright infringement cases managed on behalf of major rights holders including Sony Music Entertainment, UMG Recordings, and Warner Records.

According to the RIAA's announcement:

• The case against Suno, Inc. (developer of the Suno AI music generation service) was filed in the United States District Court for the District of Massachusetts.
• The case against Uncharted Labs, Inc. (developer of the Udio AI music generation service) was filed in the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York.

The allegations in both cases center on the same core claim: that the services copied copyrighted sound recordings on a massive scale, without license, and used those copies to train generative AI models. The complaints allege that this copying was not a one-time event but a systematic process covering decades of recorded music across genres, styles, and eras.

The relief sought in each case includes a declaration of infringement, injunctions against continued infringement, and damages for infringements that have already occurred.

The complaints state that the services cannot claim fair use as a defense because their purpose is commercial and their output is imitative rather than transformative in the legal sense the doctrine was designed to cover.

Neither case has reached a final judgment as of this article's date. The outcomes, including any rulings on fair use, the scope of copyright protection for training data, and damages, will have significant downstream implications for how AI music services are licensed and operated.

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#### What This Means for Working Musicians

The picture that emerges from these three institutional tracks is consistent in one direction: the music industry's formal position, reflected in regulatory filings and litigation, is that existing copyright law applies to AI training and AI outputs, and that licenses are required for the use of copyrighted works.

For musicians who are primarily creators, not developers of AI tools, the practical questions are:

Is your catalog registered? If AI services are found liable for using copyrighted recordings without license and settlements or licenses follow, having your works properly registered with your PRO and with The MLC positions you to participate in any distributions that result.

Are you using AI tools in your own creative process? Based on the Copyright Office's Part 2 conclusions, works that reflect genuine human creative authorship, where you are making the expressive decisions and the AI is a tool rather than the author, are likely to be treated as copyrightable under existing doctrine. Works that are purely AI-generated from a prompt, with no meaningful human creative selection, face a harder question under current law.

Are you licensing your music to AI companies? This is an area where the market is evolving rapidly. The RIAA's position is that such licenses should be negotiated in the free market. If you are approached for licensing of your catalog for AI training, the terms and the entity requesting them warrant careful review. This is not legal advice, it is a prompt to get qualified counsel involved before signing.

For a plain-language explanation of how generative music models work, see the FTSMusic article on generative music models. For a broader overview of the AI and rights landscape, see AI Music Copyright and the Copyright Office.