Artificial intelligence song creation platform Udio said it will give its frustrated users 48 hours to upload their songs starting Monday before the company switches to a new business model to comply with a legal agreement.
The brief reprieve comes after Udio said Wednesday it had settled copyright infringement claims brought by Universal Music, the label whose members include artists including Taylor Swift, Olivia Rodrigo, Drake and Kendrick Lamar.
Artificial intelligence companies are now battling so many copyright lawsuits that the tech industry lobbying group the Chamber of Progress last week called on President Donald Trump to sign an executive order directing federal prosecutors to “intervene in court cases” to protect the industry's practice of creating generative artificial intelligence tools by supplying them with copyrighted work.
Citing more than 50 pending federal cases, the group asked for help stopping litigation leading to “potentially killing fines for companies” that threaten artificial intelligence innovation. But artists warn that artificial intelligence tools built from their work also threaten their livelihoods.
In its largest settlement to date, artificial intelligence company Anthropic agreed to pay $1.5 billion (or $3,000 per book) to settle claims by authors who claimed the company illegally stole nearly half a million of their works to train its chatbot.
Udio and Universal did not disclose the financial terms of their new music licensing agreements. They also said they would team up on a new streaming platform.
As part of the agreement, Udio immediately stopped allowing people to download songs they created, which caused a backlash and an apparent churn of paying users.
“We know how much pain this causes you,” Udio later said in a post on Reddit's Udio forum, where users expressed feelings of being betrayed by the platform's sudden move and complained that it limited what they could do with their music.
Udio said it will still have to stop uploading as it moves to a new streaming platform next year. But over the weekend, the company said it would give people 48 hours, starting at 11 a.m. ET Monday, to save their “past creations.”
“Udio is a small company operating in an incredibly complex and evolving space, and we believe that partnering directly with artists and songwriters is the way forward,” Udio said in a statement.
The settlement is the music industry's first since Universal, along with Sony Music Entertainment and Warner Records, sued Udio and another artificial intelligence song generator, Suno, for copyright infringement last year.
Udio and Suno have pioneered AI-powered song-making technology that can play new songs based on prompts entered into a chatbot-style text field. Users who don't need musical talent can simply request a tune in the style of classic rock, 1980s synth-pop, or West Coast rap, for example.
Record labels have accused the platforms of using recorded works by artists without compensating them.
In a lawsuit filed against Udio last year, Universal sought to show how certain AI-generated songs created on Udio closely resemble Universal-owned classics such as Frank Sinatra's “My Way,” The Temptations' “My Girl,” ABBA's “Dancing Queen” and such holiday favorites as “Rockin' Around the Christmas Tree” and “Jingle Bell Rock.”
The musician-led group Artist Rights Alliance said Friday the Universal-Udio agreement represents a positive step in creating a “legitimate market for AI” but raised questions about whether independent artists, session musicians and songwriters will be sufficiently protected from AI practices that pose an “existential threat” to their careers.
“Licensing is the only option for the future of AI that will not lead to the wholesale destruction of art and culture,” the group said. “But this promise must be available to all music creators, not just large corporate rights holders.”
