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Artificial intelligence song generation platform Udio said it will give its frustrated users 48 hours from Monday to download their songs before shifting to a new business model to comply with the legal settlement.
The brief reprieve comes after Udio said Wednesday it has settled copyright infringement claims universal Music, a label featuring artists including Taylor Swift, Olivia Rodrigo, Fly And kendrick lamar,
AI companies are now fighting so many copyright lawsuits that the Chamber of Progress, a tech industry lobby group, called on the President last week donald trump To sign an executive order directing federal lawyers to “intervene in legal matters”, to defend the industry’s practice of creating generic AI tools by feeding off copyrighted works.
Citing more than 50 pending federal cases, the group asked for help preventing a court battle for “potentially company-killing penalties” that could jeopardize AI innovation. But artists have warned that AI tools built on their work also put their livelihoods at risk.
In the largest settlement to date, AI company Anthropic agreed to pay $1.5 billion — or $3,000 per book — to settle claims from authors who alleged the company illegally pirated nearly half a million of their works to train its chatbot.
Eudio and Universal did not disclose the financial terms of their new music licensing agreements. They also said that they will be teaming up on a new streaming platform.
As part of the settlement, Udio immediately stopped allowing people to download songs they created, triggering a backlash and apparent exodus among paying users.
“We know how much this hurts you,” Udio later said in a post. redditUdio forum, where users felt betrayed by the platform’s surprise move and were complaining that it limited what they could do with their music.
Udio said it still has to stop downloading as it transitions to a new streaming platform next year. But over the weekend, it said it would give people 48 hours from 11 a.m. Eastern time Monday to place their “previous creations.”
“Udio is a small company operating in an incredibly complex and growing sector, and we believe that partnering directly with artists and songwriters is the way forward,” Udio’s post said.
The settlement agreement was the music industry’s first deal after Universal sued Udio and another AI song generator, Listen, over copyright infringement last year along with Sony Music Entertainment and Warner Records.
Udio and Suno have pioneered AI song creation technology, which can spit out new songs based on prompts typed into a chatbot-style text box. Users who do not require musical talent can simply request a tune in the style of classic rock, 1980s synth-pop, or West Coast rap.
Record labels have accused the platform of exploiting artists’ recorded works without compensating them.
In its lawsuit filed against Udio last year, Universal tried to show how specific AI-generated songs created on Udio resemble Universal-owned classics like Frank Sinatra’s “My Way,” The Temptations’ “My Girl,” ABBA’s “Dancing Queen” and holiday favorites like “Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree” and “Jingle Bell Rock.”
Artist Rights Alliance, a musician-led group, said Friday that the Universal-Audio settlement represents a positive step in creating a “legitimate AI marketplace,” but raised questions about whether independent artists, session musicians and songwriters will be adequately protected from AI practices that pose an “existential threat” to their careers.
“Licensing is the only version of the future of AI that will not result in the large-scale destruction of arts and culture,” the group said. “But this promise must be available to all music creators, not just major corporate copyright holders.”