creation

Artificial intelligence music company Suno is going retro — eventually.

The Cambridge, Mass.-based AI company has announced Suno Vinyl, a service that will press users’ generated AI tracks onto vinyl records. It has not gone live. The company has started a waiting list, with the first pressing reserved for users who sign up. A Suno spokesperson said the company is exploring ways for people to turn their music into physical artifacts.

“Press a banger, because it’s too good to live on a screen,” Suno wrote on its website.

Users will be able to build a tracklist of up to 46 minutes from their Suno library, then either upload their own album artwork or generate it on the platform for the sleeve, labels and cover. Each record will be a 12-inch pressing made from PETG, a type of plastic. Pricing is estimated about $45 plus shipping. Suno has not said who will press the records.

Vinyl records have seen a major resurgence ever since millennials brought the format back into mainstream culture in the 2010s. Over the years, it’s become customary for major musicians to release several vinyl variants to help promote their latest album. Olivia Rodrigo most recently released roughly 10 variants of her new album, “You Seem Pretty Sad for a Girl So in Love,” in June.

Last year, vinyl record purchases accounted for more than $1 billion in U.S. sales, up more than 9%, according to the Recording Industry Assn. of America’s annual report. It was the first time vinyl revenue topped $1 billion since 1983.

The format sold 46.8 million units, against 29.5 million CDs in 2025.

Suno, founded in 2022, has established itself as a leader in AI music tech and maintains an office in Venice. In February, the company said it had surpassed 2 million paid subscribers and was on pace for $300 million in annual revenue. In June, raised more than $400 million in a Series D round led by Bond Capital, more than doubling its valuation to $5.4 billion from $2.45 billion less than a year earlier.

The growth has unfolded as the company fights on several legal fronts. Suno and its competitor Udio were sued for copyright infringement in 2024 by the RIAA on behalf of the industry’s biggest labels, including Warner Music Group, Universal Music Group and Sony Music Entertainment.

WMG was the first of the three to settle with Suno, reaching a deal last November that included a licensing agreement, Suno’s first partnership with a major label, and the sale of Warner’s Songkick concert platform to Suno.

The UMG and Sony litigation is ongoing, with a fair use hearing set for Massachusetts federal court and the labels seeking to expand their complaint. Suno also lost a case brought by German collecting society GEMA last week and is defending against legal actions from Denmark’s Koda.

Separately, class action suits against Suno and Udio have drawn support from more than 1,800 independent artists who say their recordings were used without permission to train the company’s models.

Suno has not said whether users will be able to press tracks that resemble copyrighted work, what rights users hold in the records they order, or whether the company takes a cut.

As AI creeps further into the music industry, copyright remains the sticking point — now on a format that fans seek precisely because a person made it.

WASHINGTON — Several FBI analysts tied to the creation of a 2023 memo warning of a potential threat from Catholic “violent extremists” were fired Friday, according to their lawyer, the latest wave of terminations under Director Kash Patel.

The fired employees included four intelligence analysts and a supervisory analyst. The FBI declined to comment.

“This action is manifestly unjust, completely unsupported by the facts, and subverts standard FBI policy and procedure,” their lawyer, David Laufman, said in a statement. “These individuals deserved far better for the exceptional and faithful public service they rendered to protect our country.”

The January 2023 intelligence product produced by analysts in the FBI’s Richmond, Va., field office emerged as a political focal point after it was issued, with Republicans in Congress citing it as part of their broader claim that the FBI during the Biden administration was targeting conservatives.

Then-FBI Director Chris Wray denied that allegation and the agency has said the document was quickly retracted and an internal review was launched. Merrick Garland, the attorney general under President Biden, has said he was “appalled” by the memo.

Earlier Justice Department investigations into the memo challenged the analytical tradecraft but did not find intentional misconduct by the analysts involved.

The firings are part of a broader personnel purge under Patel, a President Trump loyalist who over the last year has pushed out dozens of employees who either contributed to investigations of the president or who were perceived as not in alignment with the administration’s agenda. The Justice Department has engaged in similarly sweeping firings of prosecutors since Trump took office last year.

In February, for instance, the FBI fired a group of counterintelligence agents who participated in the investigation into Trump over his retention of classified documents at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Palm Beach, Fla.

Critics including former federal officials say the purge has transformed federal law enforcement agencies into politically motivated extensions of the Trump White House. The classified documents investigation resulted in a federal indictment against Trump, but the case was dismissed after his 2024 election.

The Richmond memo, which emerged from a domestic terrorism investigation, sought to examine a potential link between what it called “Radical Traditionalist Catholic” ideology and racially and ethnically motivated extremists. It warned of the potential for violence and also highlighted what the authors described as “new avenues for tripwire and source development.” FBI leadership quickly condemned those findings once the document became public.

An internal FBI review described in a 2023 letter to Congress and based on interviews with 26 people “found that all individuals involved in the creation, review and approval of the product failed to adhere to analytic tradecraft standards and failed to recognize that the product, as drafted, equated the subjects’ interest in their self-described form of religion with racially or ethnically motivated violent extremist (RMVE) ideology without sufficient evidence or articulable support.”

The failure to adhere to standards, including on proper domestic terrorism terminology, “created the appearance that the FBI conducts investigative activity based on religious affiliation,” the letter said. “One of the FBI’s most fundamental principles is that investigative activity may not be based solely on the exercise of rights guaranteed by the First Amendment.”

A Justice Department inspector general report in 2024 summarized the earlier FBI review by saying that though there were departures from proper analytic tradecraft, “no evidence of a malicious intent or an improper purpose” were found.

MS NOW earlier reported the firings.

Tucker and Richer write for the Associated Press and reported from Los Angeles and Washington, respectively.

WASHINGTON — A federal judge on Friday temporarily blocked President Trump’s administration from paying any claims through a new $1.776 billion settlement fund for the Republican president’s allies who believe they were victims of a weaponized government.

U.S. District Judge Leonie Brinkema in Alexandria, Va., also barred the government from moving forward with the fund’s creation while litigation is pending to challenge it.

The judge, who was nominated to the bench by President Clinton, a Democrat, scheduled a June 12 hearing for arguments on whether to extend the order blocking payouts from an “Anti-Weaponization Fund.” The government created the fund to resolve Trump’s lawsuit against the Internal Revenue Service over the leak of his tax returns.

The White House declined to comment on the judge’s ruling and referred all questions to the Justice Department, which didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

The fund has generated a fierce backlash since it was announced last week, with even Republicans pressing acting Atty. Gen. Todd Blanche over the eligibility considerations and the possibility that even violent rioters at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, would be free to seek compensation.

The Justice Department hasn’t formed the five-member commission that will decide on payout criteria, so there has been no money paid out yet or claims accepted.

Plaintiffs’ attorneys from the legal advocacy group Democracy Forward are seeking a court order halting the fund’s implementation and preventing the Trump administration from disbursing any payouts from it. The federal suit claims there is no legal basis or accountability behind the fund.

The Virginia lawsuit’s plaintiffs include a fired prosecutor and a college professor acquitted of assaulting federal agents at a protest.

“The unlawfulness that has imbued the Anti-Weaponization Fund from its inception requires that it be wholly dismantled,” the suit says.

At least two other lawsuits, both filed separately in Washington, also are challenging the fund’s creation. A lawsuit filed by the advocacy group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington refers to the fund as “a jaw-dropping act of presidential corruption.” Two police officers who helped defend the Capitol from a mob of Trump supporters sued last week.

During a congressional hearing, Blanche wouldn’t rule out the possibility that rioters who assaulted police on Jan. 6 could be eligible for fund payouts.

Nearly 1,600 people were charged with Capitol riot-related federal crimes. Over 1,200 were convicted and sentenced before Trump handed out mass pardons, commuted prison sentences and ordered the dismissal of every pending Jan. 6 criminal case last year.

Kunzelman writes for the Associated Press. AP writers Darlene Superville, Alanna Durkin Richer and Eric Tucker contributed to this report.

WASHINGTON — The U.S. government will permanently drop tax claims against President Trump, according to a settlement document that is part of a deal to resolve Trump’s $10 billion lawsuit against the Internal Revenue Service over the leak of his tax returns.

As part of the settlement agreement, the U.S. is “forever barred and precluded” from examining or prosecuting Trump, his sons and the Trump organization’s current tax issues, according to a one-page document posted to the Justice Department’s website on Tuesday.

The settlement, which marks an extraordinary use of executive power, goes beyond resolving litigation and effectively helps shield the president from further examination of his finances and legal conduct.

The move comes after the Trump administration announced Monday the creation of a nearly $1.8 billion fund to compensate allies of the Republican president who believe they have been unjustly investigated and prosecuted, an arrangement that Democrats and government watchdogs derided as “corrupt” and unconstitutional.

The “Anti-Weaponization Fund” of $1.776 billion will allow people who believe they were targeted for prosecution for political purposes, including by the Biden administration Justice Department, to apply for payouts, creating what acting Atty. Gen. Todd Blanche called “a lawful process for victims of lawfare and weaponization to be heard and seek redress.”

Blanche, who was grilled by lawmakers on Capitol Hill on Tuesday, would not rule out the possibility that people who carried out violence during the Jan. 6, 2021, riot at the U.S. Capitol will be considered for payouts from the new fund.

Democratic lawmakers and ethics watchdogs slammed the creation of the fund, saying it was corrupt, opaque and had the potential to become a “slush fund” for the president and his allies.

Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., said Democrats intend to “fight every element of this self-dealing settlement.”

“Not only is this another heinously corrupt act by the most corrupt administration in history, it’s clearly a violation of the law that prohibits interference by executive branch officials in IRS audits.”

The fund was announced after Trump, his sons Eric Trump and Donald Trump Jr., and the Trump Organization agreed to drop their lawsuit against the IRS and the Treasury Department. The lawsuit alleged that a leak of confidential tax records caused them reputational and financial harm and negatively affected their public standing, among other allegations.

According to a separate settlement agreement posted to the Justice Department website Monday, Trump will receive a formal apology from the U.S. government but “will not receive any monetary payment or damages of any kind,” from the settlement.

Trump told reporters at the White House on Monday that the fund is dedicated to “reimbursing people who were horribly treated.”

Hussein writes for the Associated Press.