Universal Music and Warner Music are close to reaching agreements on artificial intelligence (AI), according to a report in today’s Financial Times, with the newspaper citing sources with knowledge of the matter.

Universal and Warner could each come to an agreement with the AI companies within weeks, the same publication claims.

The growing use of creative AI in the creative industries has sparked a series of lawsuits, with artists, writers and rights holders accusing AI companies of using copyrighted material without consent or compensation to train their models.

Negotiations on the deal focused on how record labels license their songs to create tracks generated by creative artificial intelligence and to train large language models, according to the report.

Music companies are pursuing a payment structure similar to that for streaming, where playing a song triggers a minimum payment.