What Trilok’s Alliance with Suno Could Mean For the Future of AI Music

On Aug. 14, 2025, Collective Artists Network revealed that Trilok—touted as India’s first AI rock band—will partner with Suno, the $500-million AI music platform, as its official “platform partner.” The announcement framed the move as a union of “centuries-old melodies” and “cutting-edge AI” with ambitions to reach listeners worldwide. But for those familiar with the ongoing AI music debate, the news also signaled the beginning of a high-stakes chapter—one balancing cultural ambition with the weight of legal and industry-wide controversy.

Trilok, a creation of Collective Artists Network, is positioned as more than a gimmick. The project’s avatars channel devotional themes, rock arrangements, and cross-cultural instrumentation to reinterpret Indian heritage for the streaming age. According to founder and group CEO Vijay Subramaniam, the Suno partnership is meant to “keep the heart of the music intact while opening new ways for people around the world to connect with it.” On paper, the deal makes sense: Suno offers generative tools for composition, arrangement, and delivery at a speed no human composer can match, while Collective Artists Network brings their domestic networks and cultural fluency. Together, they have the potential to build an act that is globally exportable and locally resonant. But business sense isn’t the same as risk-free.

In June 2024, the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), on behalf of Universal Music Group, Sony Music Entertainment, and Warner Music Group, filed lawsuits against Suno and fellow AI music company Udio in US federal courts. The claim was that these platforms engaged in “industrial-scale infringement” by using copyrighted recordings without permission to train their models. According to court documents, the damages sought could reach $150,000 per infringed work—a potentially existential threat for any startup. In court filings, Suno acknowledged that it trained on copyrighted material, claiming that this falls under fair use. The RIAA disputes this, saying it undermines the rights of artists and distorts copyright law. Parallel to the lawsuits, major labels are reportedly in talks with Suno and Udio about possible licensing agreements—deals that might include catalog access, artist opt-outs, and even equity stakes.

In late 2024, Suno CEO Mikey Shulman also faced backlash after saying that “most people don’t enjoy making music” in an interview on the Twenty Minute VC podcast, where he implied that AI could remove the need for human effort in the creative process. Musicians criticized the remarks as dismissive of the art form, accusing Suno of treating music as a disposable product rather than a craft. Suno has also been under scrutiny for its lack of transparency about training data. Critics argue that without clear disclosure, there’s no way for artists to know whether their work was used to train the AI without consent. Some music industry groups have pushed for legal rules requiring AI music tools to disclose the origin of their datasets, a move Suno has so far resisted.

In India, Trilok’s announcement triggered immediate pushback. Within hours, independent artists and producers were voicing their frustration online, accusing the project of taking away attention and resources from human musicians already struggling for visibility and fair pay. 

The Trilok-Suno partnership hasn’t landed smoothly in India’s music community. Within hours of the announcement, listeners took to social media to voice frustration. Some accused the project of siphoning resources from human musicians in a market where breaking through already requires battling for playlist spots, brand dollars, and venue space. In my professional opinion, this isn’t just about creative jealousy; it’s about perception: launching a headline-grabbing AI act at a moment when many human artists are publicly lobbying for fairer streaming royalties can feel tone-deaf. As one person put it in an online forum on Reddit, “We’re fighting to make a living, and they’re debuting avatars with multimillion-dollar tech backing.”

The optics are complicated further by Suno’s global reputation. Around the same time as Trilok launched, Sunoy was at the center of the Velvet Sundown controversy, where an AI-generated band created with its tools racked up over 1 million Spotify streams before listeners learned it wasn’t human. That episode reignited calls for clear AI labeling on streaming platforms and fueled skepticism toward synthetic music masquerading as human-made. Streaming platforms like Deezer have since started adding “AI-generated” tags to music to increase transparency, but Spotify has not adopted this policy—meaning Suno releases can still appear without disclosure to listeners.

From a purely strategic perspective, Collective Artists Network may be making a calculated bet: controversy equals visibility. In a saturated content ecosystem, getting people to talk—whether they’re praising or condemning—can be the first step toward building cultural capital. Trilok is now firmly part of the global conversation about AI ethics, copyright, and cultural preservation. But that visibility comes with fragility. If Suno’s legal defenses collapse, Trilok could potentially face not just workflow disruption but reputational fallout by association. If the indie backlash deepens, the project risks being seen as a corporate tech stunt rather than a genuine artistic endeavor.

In many ways, Trilok’s alliance with Suno is a litmus test for the AI music industry. Can generative platforms navigate the legal minefield quickly enough to enable ambitious, culturally specific projects? Can AI acts win over audiences who value authenticity as much as innovation? And perhaps most crucially, can they do so without alienating the very creative communities whose work makes their models possible? This is not just a collaboration between a band and a platform. It’s a wager on the future: that AI will survive its current legal scrutiny, that audiences will embrace machine-assisted heritage music, and that India can shape the global narrative about what AI creativity looks like when rooted in tradition. Partnerships forged in turmoil can make legends—or cautionary tales. Trilok’s story has the potential to be both.