Artificial Intelligence (AI) companies have sucked up the world’s entire music catalogue and are guilty of “wilful, commercial-scale copyright infringement”, a major music industry group has said. “The world’s largest tech companies as well as AI-specific companies, such as OpenAI, Suno, and Udio, Mistral, etc. are engaged in the largest copyright infringement exercise that has been seen,” said John Phelan, director general of the International Confederation of Music Publishers (ICMP). For nearly two years, the Brussels-based body, which represents music publishers and other industry professionals, investigated how generative AI companies used material to enrich their services. “It is essential to understand the scale of the threat facing authors, composers and publishers,” warned Juliette Metz, president of the French music publishers’ association and also an ICMP member.