Sony Music Entertainment has once again sued the AI music generator Udio, alleging the startup illegally copied more than 30,000 songs from the likes of Beyoncé, Harry Styles and Elvis Presley to train its models.
Sony first brought lawsuits against Udio and its competitor Suno in June 2024 alongside labels Universal Music Group and Warner Music Group. In the new lawsuit, filed Monday in the U.S. District Court of the Southern District of New York, Sony claimed that discovery for the case revealed 30,117 tracks were found among Udio’s training datasets. U.S. District Court Judge Alvin K. Hellerstein last month denied Sony’s bid to add those tracks to its original suit, prompting the label to file a new complaint to protect its copyright.
“Foundational principles of copyright law dictate that copying protected sound recordings for the purpose of developing a commercial AI product like Udio’s requires permission from rightsholders,” Sony alleged in its complaint. “Otherwise, such AI offerings will erode the value of the artistic works that comprise the essential raw materials that allow them to function in the first place. If left unmoored from existing and longstanding legal constraints, such products could supplant, rather than support, genuine human creativity.”
Representatives for Sony and Udio did not respond to immediate requests for comment. Udio claimed in an April response to Sony’s initial suit that, while admitting it trained its models on copyrighted songs uploaded to YouTube, such training amounted to fair use due to its platform using “a back-end technological process, invisible to the public, in the service of creating an ultimately non-infringing new product.”
The case comes as companies across the media and entertainment industries, from Hollywood studios to record labels to news organizations, try to navigate how to engage with AI while protecting their copyrighted work. Since the original lawsuit, both Universal Music Group and Warner Music Group have settled their respective cases against Udio and entered into licensing agreements with the AI startup, which is preparing a new industry-backed model for release later this year. (Sony and Universal are still fighting Suno in court.)
But such agreements show that Udio could have licensed Sony’s tracks instead of allegedly ripping them from YouTube, the label claimed.
“At its core, this case is about ensuring that copyright continues to incentivize human invention and imagination, as it has for centuries,” Sony claimed in its lawsuit. “Achieving this end does not require stunting technological innovation, but it does require that Udio adhere to copyright law and respect the creators whose works allow it to function in the first place.”
The company is seeking at least $150,000 per each work infringed and for the court to block Udio from using its work to train its models.
