Google has asked a federal court to dismiss a class-action lawsuit accusing the company of using copyrighted music from independent artists to train its Lyria 3 AI model, asserting that YouTube’s terms of service already grant a license for such use.
The suit, filed in March by a collective of musicians including members of the bands Attack the Sound and Directrix, alleges that Google extracted their recordings from YouTube without authorization or compensation to develop the music-generation system.
In its motion, Google argues that when artists uploaded their works to YouTube and accepted the platform’s terms, they granted Google “a broad license to use” the content “in connection with Google’s business.” The company maintains that this license covers AI training activities.
Google also challenges the plaintiffs’ standing under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), contending that the complaint does not show any infringing output from Lyria 3 or demonstrate that copyright management information was altered or removed.
Additionally, Google invokes the Supreme Court’s ruling in Cox vs. Sony, arguing that the lawsuit lacks allegations that Google intentionally induced users to generate infringing songs, a necessary element for a contributory copyright infringement claim under recent precedent.
