AI models are stealing music at an unprecedented rate, new report claims

The International Confederation of Music Publishers (ICMP) has shared a new report accusing tech companies like Google, Microsoft, Meta, OpenAI and X of training their artificial intelligence systems on music protected by copyright, including acts like The Beatles and Michael Jackson. “This is the largest IP theft in human history," ICMP director general John Phelan tells Billboard. "That’s not hyperbole. We are seeing tens of millions of works being infringed daily.”

The report was created over the course of two years. ICMP says its contents, which include "publicly available registries, open-source repositories of training content, leaked materials, research papers and independent research by AI experts," show tech companies illegally using the work of millions of artists and songwriters at a “global and highly extensive scale."

Within the report, the ICMP has assembled numerous allegations of infringement, from lyrics to album art to music itself. Numerous AI companies, including music generators Udio and Suno, are accused of lifting music from YouTube without a licence according to previously private datasets. The report also claims that Microsoft's Copilot and Google's Gemini generated lyrics copying well-known songs like Bob Dylan’s “Knockin’ On Heaven’s Door” and Childish Gambino’s “This Is America." Numerous chatbots are also said to have "admitted" to being trained on copyright-protected work. Several other companies, including Deepseek, OpenAI, and Midjourney, are also named in the report.

“Despite their public claims that they’re not training upon copyright-protected works, we’ve caught many of them [tech companies] red-handed,” Phelan tells Billboard. "Aside from amounting to breaches of copyright laws and often contract laws, this is often done despite the music sector’s consistent and clear statements that licenses are both required and available for legal AI training and GenAI.”

Phelen says that the ICMP will continue gathering evidence and share what it has with the appropriate legal teams. “The future needs to be one of ‘license or desist.'”