Warner Music Group announced on Wednesday that it has acquired artificial intelligence detection company Sureel.
WMG and Sureel did not disclose any financial details of the acquisition, although both companies confirmed that Sureel will continue to operate as an independent company. WMG hopes the deal will help the music company and its artists and songwriters track how their work is used to train AI models, and when their work appears in AI tracks.
In a press release, Sorel said it creates “AI DNA” for each business it feeds, “breaking it down into component parts and tracking how AI models use those elements.”
“Bringing Sureel into WMG strengthens our ability to protect, control and monetize and ensures the creative community remains in control of its intellectual property, name, image, likeness and voice,” WMG CEO Robert Kinkel said in a statement. “We look forward to working with Tamai and his team to develop all of their amazing work.”
WMG has been particularly active in the AI space, with the company notably settling its lawsuits and striking deals with AI music generation platforms Suno and Udio last year. WMG is currently the only major record label to settle with Suno.
The ability to track how your copyrights are used to train AI is becoming an increasingly critical tool as AI continues to spread across the entertainment industry from music to film and television. It is not clear at the time of publishing this article how effective Sorel actually is THR He didn’t use technology. But the company promotes itself as a more sophisticated method than simply detecting whether a business is present in training data, instead detailing how businesses use it at a more granular level.
“Rightholders deserve to know how AI interacts with their work, and to share fairly in the value it creates,” Dr. Tamai Aykut, founder and CEO of Sorel, said in a statement. “Sureel is designed to make this possible, and with WMG’s support, we can execute our mission at scale, build a more transparent and fair future and drive value growth for the entire music and entertainment ecosystem.”
