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How can they do this?

A number of companies now offer people the chance to create music using AI.

Names like Suno and Udio have revolutionised the music industry by allowing non-musicians the ability to generate very professional music tracks simply by using text prompts.

This stuff is so good that it has fooled many music critics and even created entirely new "virtual performers" with entire albums being released and performing very well on streaming services.

Naturally, the traditional recording studios and artists have been outraged by the way AI is stealing their market. As a result, these AI music companies are now facing a barrage of law suits challenging their right to use existing copyrighted tracks as training data.

Now something very interesting has happened.

Universal Music Group (UMG) have struck a deal with Udio, one of the largest AI music generation platforms.

The terms of this deal however, have left users of the Udio service fuming.

The original terms of service allowed subscribers to create music tracks and download them for whatever purpose they chose.

As a result of the deal, the Udio TOS has now been changed, unilaterally, to prohibit the download of any tracks generated.

WTF?

Here's with the TOS now says:

However, in section 6.3.1 of the TOS, it is clearly stated that:

Excuse me?

How on earth can you use the output if you're forbidden to download it?

Who on earth wrote this piece of garbage TOS?

It's pretty easy to see why Udio users are now up in arms.

They've paid good money for a service that has effectively been ripped out from under them simply because the company wanted to avoid getting itself sued to hell and back by a huge music publisher.

Who in their right mind would sign up to a service that operates like this and although most TOS include a clause that says "terms and conditions subject to change", thus giving the right to make unilateral changes without consultation, such an extreme alteration to those TOS must surely be legally questionable.

Imagine buying a brand new car, using it for a few months and then suddenly finding that the manufacturer has changed the conditions of use such that you are now no longer allowed to drive it on public roads. Yes,the thing will still drive, the windscreen wipers still work, the radio still plays but you can no longer use it for the primary purpose you bought it for. That's more or less what's going on here with Udio.

I guess this is just one more crazy situation that our headlong rush to embrace AI has created. It will be fascinating to see how this plays out. Will Udio collapse as users ditch the platform? Will competing services such as Suno also sell-out to avoid being sued out of existance?

Waiter... more popcorn please!

Carpe Diem folks!

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