AI’s Forte: Copyright Lawsuit Settled, Universal Music Plans Collab With Stability AI

“Good artists copy, great artists steal,” Apple cofounder Steve Jobs (1955–2011) said in a 1988 news story, crediting Pablo Picasso (1881–1973). If the Spanish artist were still alive today, Picasso might tweak the quote:

“Good artists copy, great artists steal, and artificial intelligence blurs the line.” — Picasso or Someone Else Famous (1890–1990)

While plagiarism is not a crime, copyright infringement is illegal under federal law. The penalties are more akin to trespassing than thievery, but over the years, Congress has been hiking those fines. Capitol Hill also expanded the scope of behaviors that can constitute plagiarism or copyright infringement.

Settled: Universal Music v. AI Music platform Udio

UMG said on Thursday (Oct. 30) that it has settled its copyright-infringement litigation against the AI music platforms Udio and Suno. In the lawsuit, UMG said in a statement that it wanted “an injunction and damages commensurate with the scope of Udio’s massive and ongoing infringement.”

UMG has now entered into a strategic alliance with Stability AI to develop “next-generation professional music creation tools.”

The tools will be powered by “responsibly trained generative AI” and aimed at bolstering the innovative pursuits of songwriters, musicians, artists, and producers, UMG said in a statement. The new platform is set to launch in 2026.

“UMG has long been a leader in technological innovation in music,” said Prem Akkaraju, CEO of Stability AI. “This partnership marks the next chapter of music creation. At Stability AI, we put the artist at the center and build AI around their unique needs because real transformation has always come from a combination of art and science.”

By centering artists in the development process, the collaboration will prioritize feedback from the creative community to guide the creation of fully licensed, commercially safe AI music tools, advancing responsible innovation that supports both artists and rightsholders while preserving the integrity of the art form.

“This agreement is an extension of our fundamental orientation that our artists and songwriters are the cornerstone of our business. With AI, as with everything else we do, we start with what best supports our work to help them achieve creative and commercial success and build from that foundation to forge new and better commercial and creative opportunities,” said UMG Chief Digital Officer & EVP Michael Nash.

“And as we’ve made abundantly clear, we will only consider advancing AI tools and products based on models that are trained responsibly. We’re looking forward to working with Stability AI to deeply integrate AI tools development with the vision and creative ambitions of our artists and to the results and rewards this initiative offers to all,” he added.

Who Did or Said What When?

The murky origin of the “good artists” quote is a clear example of just how unclear the laws are surrounding copyright infringement, according to academics, scholars, and lawsuits. Aside from Jobs and Picasso, the spirit of the quote is credited to:

Russian composer Igor Stravinsky (1882–1971): The conductor famed for his ballets said “A good composer does not imitate; he steals,” per Internet Archives and a 1961 Observer article based on Stravinsky’s conversations with his assistant and friend, conductor and writer Robert Craft.
English Journalist W. H. Davenport Adams (1828-1891): In a 1892 essay in “The Gentleman’s Magazine,” he praised the “assimilative method” of poet Alfred Tennyson, stating “great poets imitate and improve, whereas small ones steal and spoil.”
American Journalist Brendan Gill (1914–1997): In his 1975 memoir, “Here at the New Yorker,” Gill credits poet T.S. Eliot (1888–1965) with “Immature poets imitate; mature poets steal; bad poets deface what they take, and good poets make it into something better.” The quote is from Eliot’s1920 essay “Philip Massinger.”
American novelist William Faulkner: In numerous articles and essays, the Nobel Prize-winning writer is given credit with having said, “The immature poet imitates, the mature poet plagiarizes.”
American literary critic Lionel Trilling (1905-1975): “Immature artists imitate. Mature artists steal,” the short story writer and teacher reportedly said.

As of Sept. 16, 2025, worldwide copyright lawsuits filed against AI companies totaled 75. In the U.S., 51 lawsuits are in play, with the latest being Disney v. MiniMax. Outside of the U.S., there are 24 legal proceedings, according to the blog ChatGPTIsEatingTheWorld.

These 20 lawsuits are among the most prominent, according to Originality.ai:

Ziff Davis v. OpenAI – April 24, 2025
Canadian News Outlets v. OpenAI – November 28, 2024
ANI v. OpenAI – November 19, 2024
Elon Musk v. Samuel Altman, Gregory Brockman, and OpenAI – August 5, 2024
Daily News Lp Et Al V. Microsoft Corporation – April 30, 2024.
Elon Musk v. Samuel Altman, Gregory Brockman, and OpenAI – February 29, 2024
The Intercept Media v. OpenAI and Microsoft – February 28, 2024
Raw Story Media, Inc. and Alternet Media Inc. v. OpenAI – February 28, 2024
The New York Times Company v. Openai Inc. – December 27, 2023.
Sancton v. OpenAI Inc. et al – November 21, 2023.
Authors Guild et al v. OpenAI Inc. et al – September 19, 2023.
Chabon v. OpenAI, Inc. – September 8, 2023.
OpenAI, Inc. v. Open Artificial Intelligence, Inc. – August 4, 2023.
Doe 3 et al v. GitHub, Inc. et al – November 10, 2022.
DOE 1 et al v. GitHub, Inc. et al – November 3, 2022.
T. et al v. OpenAI LP et al – September 5, 2023.
Walters v. OpenAI LLC – July 14, 2023.
Silverman, et al v. OpenAI Inc. – July 7, 2023.
Tremblay v. OpenAI Inc. – June 28, 2023.
PM et al v. OpenAI LP et al – June 28, 2023.

Copyright Act, Amendments, Technology, and Fines

Copyright infringement fines in the early 20th century were handled just like serious criminal offenses, with convicted violators facing felony charges, jail time, and multimillion-dollar penalties, the U.S. Department of Justice (DoJ) said, citing the Criminal Resource Manual.

Federal legislation was amended in concert with changing technologies and behaviors; however, many individual states have their own copyright infringement legislation. Because rapid technological advancements often outpace existing legal frameworks, older laws are quickly rendered obsolete or ineffective, Global Policy Watch said in an Aug. 17 press release highlighting central mid-year legislative and regulatory developments.

The Copyright Act of 1909 and the Copyright Act of 1976 modernized U.S. copyright law to accommodate new technologies, establish a uniform national system, and align U.S. law with international standards.

The Copyright Office registers copyright claims, records information about copyright ownership, provides public information, and assists Congress and other parts of the government.

The 1992 amendments made copyright infringement a felony relating to all types of copyrighted works, including computer software and other works written, stored, or transmitted in digital format. A recent iteration of the copyright law added online streaming and piracy services. The latest amendments target AI and deepfakes, according to the U.S. Copyright Office.

Fair Use v. Copyright Violation

Two federal judges have ruled that using copyrighted works to train generative AI models was fair use, even if the output was lifted from unauthorized piracy websites, according to reports.

Anthropic and Meta each won landmark victories in two separate court cases that investigated whether either company violated copyright by training their large language models (LLM) on copyrighted books without permission.

The court ruled that Anthropic’s unauthorized use of copyrighted books counts as “fair use” under US copyright law, but the company’s downloading of massive amounts of books from online pirate libraries does not.

In February, a Delaware federal court ruled for the plaintiff in Thomson Reuters Enterprise Centre GMBH v. ROSS Intelligence Inc. Reuters, the owner of Westlaw, sued Ross for using Westlaw headnotes — summaries of key points of law and case holdings — to train an AI-driven legal research search engine.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit has affirmed a district court ruling that AI can’t be deemed the author of a work for copyright purposes.

Copyright Infringement: Federal v. State Laws

Section 2B5.3 of the law’s sentencing guidelines establishes, as a specific offense characteristic, that if “the retail value of the infringing items exceeded $2,000,” then the guideline level will be increased by the corresponding number of levels.

Lawmakers rejected a proposed moratorium on state and local enforcement of AI laws primarily due to bipartisan concerns over federal overreach, according to a September commentary at George Washington University (GW) Regulatory Studies Center, Columbian College of Arts & Sciences.

The rejection preserves individual state rights to protect their residents from potential hardships arising from emerging AI. Some states have already submitted AI policy proposals focused on deepfakes that were worthy of federal legislative advancement.

Researchers at The George Washington University have explored the arguments for and against federal preemption.

“Rather than pausing local innovation in favor of central planning, policymakers may benefit from learning from the diversity of state-level responses already underway,” Tambudzai Gundani said in the GW commentary.

Federal law generally preempts state law on copyright infringement for any work that falls under federal copyright protection. State law might apply in situations where the work is not subject to federal copyright, such as when the work is in the public domain or when the state has a specific law that grants more or fewer rights than federal law.

Neil Chilson, head of AI policy at the Abundance Institute, said that if a state moratorium returns, it will likely be packaged alongside a broader federal framework. The Abundance Institute focuses on the societal and policy barriers that emerging technologies face.

The federal legislation is straightforward and conveys information about new technologies. Penalties include:

Misdemeanor: Up to one year in prison and a fine of up to $100,000.
Felony: Up to five years in prison and a fine of up to $250,000 for a first offense.
Repeat felony offenders: Penalties can increase to up to 10 years in prison and a $250,000 fine.
Willful infringement of digital works: Penalties can reach up to five years in prison, especially if the infringement involves works not yet commercially released or performed.

Training AI: Plagiarism, Ethics, and Copyright

Complex legal disputes continue over whether AI companies can “train” their products on copyrighted music, books, and news reports without authorization. Using copyrighted works for training AI models has turned into a frenzied legal battle between tech companies and content creators.

Udio went public in April 2024 with backing from venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz (a16z), musician will.i.am, Instagram co-founder and CTO Mike Krieger, and Google Gemini VP of Research Oriol Vinyals.

In the copyright lawsuit against Meta, 13 authors, including Sarah Silverman and Ta-Nehisi Coates, accused the tech giant of using their books to train its Llama AI model without permission. A federal judge dismissed the lawsuit on “fair use” grounds, ruling that the authors had not proven market harm or provided sufficient evidence.

Meta settled with the state of Texas for $1.4 billion over claims that it illegally used users’ biometric data without consent, Business Insider reported.

The state of New Mexico sued Meta, accusing the company of designing its platforms to harm children’s mental health and expose them to exploitation. Meta violated the state’s Unfair Practices Act, New Mexico alleges, and is demanding internal records related to AI chatbots, according to a Wired report.

About Stability AI

Stability AI is the enterprise-ready creative partner for teams and creators, delivering professional-grade generative AI tools and solutions for media generation and editing across image, video, 3D, and audio, enabling creative production at scale.

Stability AI announced a strategic partnership with Electronic Arts to co-develop transformative generative AI models, tools, and workflows that empower EA’s artists, designers, and developers to reimagine how games are made.

Stability AI is the industry leader in commercially safe generative audio. Its Stable Audio family of models was built specifically for professionals and trained exclusively on licensed data to support responsible, high-quality music and sound generation.

About Universal Music Group

UMG is the world leader in music-based entertainment, with a broad array of businesses engaged in recorded music, music publishing, merchandising, and audiovisual content. UMG is the largest of the “Big Three” record labels, alongside Sony Music Entertainment and Warner Music Group. It consistently holds the most significant global market share in recorded music.

Featuring the most comprehensive catalogue of recordings and songs across every musical genre, UMG identifies and develops artists and produces and distributes the most critically acclaimed and commercially successful music in the world.