Music labels’ AI lawsuits create new copyright puzzle for US courts

Country musician Tift Merritt’s most popular song on Spotify, “Traveling Alone,” is a ballad with lyrics evoking solitude and the open road.

Prompted by Reuters to make “an Americana song in the style of Tift Merritt,” the artificial intelligence music website Udio instantly generated “Holy Grounds,” a ballad with lyrics about “driving old backroads” while “watching the fields and skies shift and sway.”

Merritt, a Grammy-nominated singer and songwriter, told Reuters that the “imitation” Udio created “doesn’t make the cut for any album of mine.”