A US federal judge has allowed most of indie country artist Tony Justice’s proposed class action against AI music company Suno to continue into discovery. The ruling means the court will examine claims that Suno trained its system on artists’ YouTube recordings without permission and produced music that may unlawfully imitate protected works, an early procedural victory for the artists rather than a finding of liability.

Judge F. Dennis Saylor IV rejected Suno’s attempt to dismiss the derivative-works and alleged stream-ripping claims, while leaving an unchallenged copyright-reproduction claim intact. Although the complaint did not identify a specific Suno output infringing the plaintiffs’ own songs, it cited about 100 examples involving other rightsholders; the judge said infringement by Suno’s outputs was a plausible inference to test through discovery. The sole dismissed count was under Tennessee’s consumer-protection law, which the plaintiffs said had been cited inadvertently.