The federal government's own answer to whether training an AI on copyrighted songs is legal exists now — as a report, marked pre-publication, that declines to give either side the clean verdict it wants.
The paper's June 28 piece reported that the Suno docket keeps one AI music suit alive after a companion case settled into a license. That piece called the Copyright Office study the unresolved policy ground. The study is no longer a promise; the office has released it.
The Copyright Office's artificial-intelligence page records that on May 9, 2025 it published a pre-publication version of Part 3, on generative-AI training, in response to congressional inquiries, with a final version to follow and no substantive change expected. [1] The page is the office's own timeline, and it shows the government moving from collecting comments to stating an analysis.
The report itself is the substance a slogan skips. Its pre-publication text works through whether using copyrighted works to train models is infringement and when fair use might apply, treating the question as fact-specific rather than settled in either direction. [2] A reader who wants the federal view can read it, and will find analysis and conditions, not a headline that training is plainly lawful or plainly theft.
The live case is where the analysis meets money. CourtListener's docket for UMG Recordings v. Suno, 1:24-cv-11611 in the federal District of Massachusetts, is still taking filings while the office's report circulates, the record that will convert a policy analysis into a judgment for named parties. [3] A study can frame the law; only the docket can bind the defendant.
This is the divergence. X argues the training question as decided — theft to one camp, progress to the other. Trade coverage in Billboard frames it as labels against startups. The federal record is more careful than both: a pre-publication report that weighs fair use case by case, and an open suit that has not ruled. The honest place to follow AI music stays the office and the docket, not the verdict a feed already delivered.
-- CAMILLE BEAUMONT, Los Angeles