Google Moves to Dismiss AI Music Copyright Lawsuit

Google filed a motion to dismiss a proposed class-action lawsuit in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois. A group of independent musicians, including Sam Kogon and Magnus Fiennes, allege that the company illegally used their uploaded songs to train Lyria 3, a music generation AI model integrated into the Gemini app.

In its legal filing, Google argues that the plaintiffs cannot prove their specific works were used in the training process. The company further asserts that YouTube's Terms of Service grant a broad, royalty-free, and transferable license to reproduce uploaded content and create derivative works, which would authorize the AI training in question.

This legal strategy relies on contractual licenses rather than the fair use arguments typically employed by AI competitors such as Anthropic and Suno. The motion was filed by the law firm Quinn Emanuel Urquhart & Sullivan on behalf of Google.