Suno, a generative AI music company, has secured $125 million in its latest funding round, as announced on the company’s blog. The start-up, which stands out for its ability to generate voice, lyrics, and instrumentals simultaneously, aims to “build a future where anyone can make music” using AI technology.
With Suno, users can create complete songs by simply entering text prompts. The company utilizes proprietary technology and leverages OpenAI’s ChatGPT for lyric and title generation. Users can generate a varying number of songs per month depending on their subscription plan, with the Premier plan allowing up to 2,000 songs monthly under general commercial terms.
The funding round attracted notable investors such as Lightspeed Venture Partners, Nat Friedman and Daniel Gross, Matrix, and Founder Collective. Suno has also been collaborating with a team of advisors, including prominent figures from the music and technology industries.
Like for other startups in the AI landscape, there are concerns over the legality of Suno’s training data. Ed Newton-Rex, founder of Fairly Trained and former vice president of audio for Stability AI, suggested in a post on X that the company may have trained its model on copyrighted material without consent.
What may be most depressing about this huge fundraise from Suno is the example it sets to other AI music startups.
— Ed Newton-Rex (@ednewtonrex) May 21, 2024
The message it sends them is clear. If your output resembles copyrighted music; if you won’t reveal your training data or engage publicly on this in any way; if one… https://t.co/GLHvRa88pm
The legality of training AI models on copyrighted material without licenses is still being determined in the United States, with ongoing lawsuits against companies like OpenAI and its backer Microsoft. Suno representatives say that their model will not allow users to create music in the style of specific artists or employ their voices.
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