Sony Music sues Udio over 30,000 tracks used to train AI

Sony Music has filed a second lawsuit against artificial intelligence (AI) music start-up Udio, alleging that more than 30,000 copyrighted recordings were used without permission to train its AI models.

The new complaint, filed Monday, July 20, follows a June 2024 action brought by Sony Music, Universal Music and Warner Music against Udio. That earlier suit claimed the company had used thousands of copyrighted recordings to train both Udio and competitor Suno’s tools.

What the new filing claims

Sony and nine affiliated labels say they inspected Udio’s training data and identified 30,117 audio recordings that were illegally copied. The labels allege that Udio “concealed the contents of its training data” and “copied the key expressive features of copyrighted sound recordings.”

The complaint names recordings by artists including:

• Michael Jackson
• Harry Styles
• Britney Spears
• Beyoncé

The labels state that the 30,117 works are only a “small portion” of the recordings they believe were infringed.

Prior court ruling

The filing comes after a June ruling in the same court, in which a judge denied Sony’s request to add thousands of allegedly infringed tracks to the existing 2024 case.

“At its core, this case is about ensuring that copyright continues to incentivise human invention and imagination, as it has for centuries,” the suit states.

“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.”