Sony Music Entertainment has filed a new lawsuit against AI music generator Udio in U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, alleging the startup illegally copied 30,117 tracks from its training datasets. The songs include works by Beyoncé, Harry Styles and Elvis Presley.
Sony first sued Udio and competitor Suno in June 2024 alongside Universal Music Group and Warner Music Group. U.S. District Court Judge Alvin K. Hellerstein last month denied Sony’s bid to add the newly discovered tracks to its original suit, prompting the label to file the separate complaint.
Sony argued in its complaint that foundational principles of copyright law require permission from rights holders before a company can copy protected sound recordings to develop a commercial AI product. The label claimed that Udio trained its models on copyrighted songs uploaded to YouTube without authorization.
Udio has argued that such training constitutes fair use, claiming it uses “a back-end technological process, invisible to the public, in the service of creating an ultimately non-infringing new product.” Sony noted that both Universal Music Group and Warner Music Group have since settled their cases against Udio and entered licensing agreements, arguing this shows the startup could have licensed the tracks legally.
Sony is seeking at least $150,000 per infringed work and a court order blocking Udio from using its work to train models. The company stated: “At its core, this case is about ensuring that copyright continues to incentivize human invention and imagination, as it has for centuries.”
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Source: Variety
