20260801 Urteil gegen KI-Musikkopien

90.000 new songs are produced by AI daily

A First Victory Against the Unauthorized Use of Music for Training AI:
In the legal dispute over songs generated by artificial intelligence, the Munich I Regional Court largely upheld a lawsuit filed by the music collecting society Gema on Friday (July 31, 2026). The U.S. company Suno must refrain in the future from reproducing or having reproduced certain musical works without the plaintiff’s consent ..., according to the presiding judge, as reported by rbb24.

The case involved songs by Alphaville, Helene Fischer, and the Berlin-based musician Balbina. Suno’s AI music generators were trained, for example, using 21 songs by Balbina. The musician was not consulted. We had written about a similar case in our report on the “Fairness Now” rally: “A voice actress reported that, due to her employer’s dependence on Netflix, she is being forced to sign a consent form allowing Netflix to use her voice to train AI.”

The Munich ruling will have implications beyond these individual cases because AI providers will act more cautiously in the future, but that doesn’t mean the problem is off the table. First, Suno will appeal, and providers will make it harder in the future to prove that they used the original music on their servers or trained their AI with it.

This means, of course, that the legal dispute is shifting toward technical quibbles rather than fundamentally clarifying the question of under what circumstances AI may alter and sell human “creations.” For GEMA and the Pro Musik association, the main concern is securing regular compensation for themselves and the artists.

The revenue generated by the clicks on AI-generated fake music thus ends up in the accounts of the fraudsters instead to the artists.

Anyone who can program a bot farm can generate clicks on fake AI music and make money from the providers.

Translated with DeepL.com (free version)