Written by: Dolapo Akinkugbe, Esq.

Background on Timbaland

Timbaland, a renowned record producer and songwriter, has always been an innovator in music and at the forefront of cutting-edge music technology. Known for his distinctive, futuristic production, and knack for incorporating avant-garde sounds into chart-topping hits for artists such as Missy Elliott, Justin Timberlake, Jay-Z and Beyoncé to name a few, Timbaland is no stranger to the tension between innovation and tradition that comes with new, unprecedented ideas. 

Timbaland’s music technology experiments date back for years, such as his 2016 embrace of SubPac, a tactile audio system that adds physical immersion to sound, his 2020 co-creation (with Swizz Beatz) of Verzuz, a pandemic-born Instagram-Live series that brought music battles and celebrations of music of some of our favorite artists to our devices, and his 2021 founding of Hipgnosis-backed Beatclub, a music platform and marketplace for artists, producers, and songwriters that connects the creative community with record labels, music publishers, licensing companies and independent artists. However, with the launch of Stage Zero and its AI artist “TaTa”, his vision for the future of music creation has left many conflicted, to say the least.

AI and Music Creation

Artists have questioned the various use cases for AI and the impact it will have on artists, a question raised as early as 2018 by pop star and producer SOPHIE in the 2018 interview with Hanson Robotics’ realistic humanoid robot Sophia.

Precedents concerning text- and image-based AI models are now beginning to provide insight as to how the law might deal with AI and music creation. In Andersen v. Stability AI (2023-ongoing), a visual artist sued Stability AI for training models on copyrighted art without permission. Getty Images v. Stability AI (UK, 2023) reinforced the notion that the data used to train AI models is important, not just the final output. Authors Guild v. OpenAI (2023-2024) raised similar issues around text-based AI, though courts have not yet settled whether or not training on copyrighted works is inherently infringing.

With respect to music, various platforms, such as Udio and Suno, that facilitate the use of AI in music creation have emerged and advance prior systems with their ability to generate more natural-sounding vocals and instrumental performances, contextually appropriate lyrics from simple text prompts, and ultra-high-fidelity audio.

Major Lawsuit: UMG Recordings, Inc., et al. v. Suno, Inc.

In June 2024, the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) filed a joint lawsuit on behalf of Universal Music Group, Sony Music, and Warner Records against Suno, the AI music company powering Stage Zero’s technology. The complaint alleges that Suno trained its generative music models on vast libraries of copyrighted works without permission, licensing, or compensation to rightsholders, describing the tool as “a commercial-scale music generator built on the backs of pirated content,” which echoes similar litigation against AI text and image companies as mentioned above. The plaintiffs assert that the unauthorized use of their recordings undermines the music industry by devaluing human creativity and competing directly with genuine sound recordings. 

Suno, while not denying that it used major labels’ music to train its models, claims such use falls under the fair use doctrine, asserting that any intermediate copies used for training the model are not publicly available and serve a “transformative purpose”, a key notion of the fair use doctrine. Suno further emphasizes that the outputs do not contain actual samples or direct reproductions of any copyrighted works.

While litigation is ongoing, reports suggest that UMG and other major labels are exploring a potential licensing deal with Suno, which could also involve the record companies acquiring equity stakes in Suno.

Timbaland and Stage Zero

In June 2025, a year after UMG et al.’s lawsuit v. Suno, Timbaland and his co-founders announced Stage Zero, an AI-focused entertainment company through which Timbaland intends to produce “systems, stories, and stars from scratch” in a new genre he dubs “APop” (artificial pop). Stage Zero’s founders have said that the music they create relies on a collaborative process with Suno, whereby Timbaland uploads conventional demos to the system, and Suno processes the demo’s elements (melody, rhythm, harmonies) and generates new musical iterations, potentially including AI-generated vocals. Human songwriters then contribute by writing and refining the lyrics for the AI-generated music. 

Stage Zero simultaneously announced TaTa, described as “a living, learning, autonomous music artist built with AI” using Suno’s “Personas” tool to craft TaTa’s distinctive voice. In July, 2025, Stage Zero released a teaser for TaTa’s highly anticipated debut single, titled "PULSE X GLITCH.”, which will mark Stage Zero’s first official release.

Industry reaction has been mixed. Fellow music producer and Hip-Hop legend Swizz Beatz defends the move, stating “this is Tim’s entry point into AI... it just means more creativity for creators.” Timbaland has stated that the use of Suno’s “Personas” tool to craft TaTa’s distinctive voice has accelerated production timelines such that what took months now takes days. Additionally, having been built with iterative machine learning, TaTa’s voice evolves over time, which sets her apart from one-off voice models or static sampling. Rocky Mudaliar, cofounder of Stage Zero, explained that “the artists of tomorrow won’t just be human, they’ll be IP, code and robotics…”.

On the other hand, critics counter that AI lacks authenticity, originality, and raises ethical concerns. Such critics note the struggle of AI to produce emotional depth, the risk of creating music that is formulaic and predictable due to training on vast datasets of music, and the potential for displacement of human musicians and other music industry professionals.

Legal Implications and Industry Impact

At the core of the controversy around Timbaland’s Stage Zero venture lies a growing legal question in the music industry: Can artificial intelligence models legally be trained on copyrighted music? Timbaland himself has already run into issues after taking independent producer K Fresh’s original song, uploading it into Suno’s AI platform, and releasing an unauthorized AI remix without consent or credit. This not only violated U.S. copyright law but also breached Suno’s own Terms of Use, which requires users to own any uploaded content, and resulted in an open letter from K Fresh and his attorney Ryan Schmidt, Esq. and a subsequent apology from Timbaland.

If it is found in the UMG Recordings, Inc., et al. v. Suno, Inc. case that the Suno model underlying TaTa and Stage Zero’s creations is found to have been trained using copyrighted music unlawfully, every output, including TaTa’s songs, could be viewed as derivative works, exposing Stage Zero to secondary liability under U.S. copyright law. 

Another major legal challenge is the opacity of generative AI models. Artists and labels often can’t trace exactly which songs were used in training or whether a generated song resembles any specific work. This “black box” effect complicates enforcement and has fueled the call for greater transparency and opt-in or opt-out licensing frameworks for training datasets.

Some lawyers argue that the fair use doctrine could apply, especially if the AI model transforms data in a non-commercial, educational context. However, most agree that commercial music generation for profit, especially involving output marketed as new artists (like TaTa), is unlikely to enjoy that protection. 

Some key unresolved questions remain: (a) Should AI output be treated as a derivative work? (b) Can AI-generated content be copyrighted, and by whom? and (c) What is the threshold for substantial similarity between AI outputs and training inputs? Until these are answered in court or by legislation, ventures like Stage Zero exist in a legal gray zone, innovative but exposed.

Written by: Dolapo Akinkugbe, Esq.

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