Why Sony Just Filed a New AI Music Copyright Lawsuit Against Udio
Categoria: Musica
The major music company is expanding the scope of its claims against the AI platform, even after Universal and Warner made licensing peace.
Por Billboard | 20/07/2026
Sony has initiated a new lawsuit against Udio, doubling down on its aggressive copyright campaign against the AI music company months after the other majors buried the hatchet. The lawsuit, filed on Monday (July 20) and obtained by Billboard , expands the scope of Sony’s existing legal claims against Udio. The major music company initially teamed up with Universal Music Group (UMG) and Warner Music Group (WMG) in 2024 to sue both Udio and rival AI music company Suno, alleging both companies had committed copyright infringement at an “almost unimaginable scale” by training their models on unlicensed recordings. Related How AI Rights Are Changing Record Contracts — and Why Music Attorneys Are Pushing Back Desiigner Arrested on Domestic Violence Charge in South Carolina DJ Quik Says His Son 'Made a Mistake' Following Murder Conviction, Pleads With Fans to Stop Asking About It UMG and WMG both exited the Udio litigation in the fall after reaching licensing deals that will require the tech company to build a new model out of pre-cleared training data and keep all AI-generated music inside a “walled garden” on the platform. WMG later settled with Suno as well. UMG and Sony are both continuing to sue Suno, but Sony is the sole remaining holdout of the three majors to still be pursuing Udio in court. Sony is showing no signs of giving up that fight against Udio. Monday’s new lawsuit increases the number of sound recordings at issue in the case from 333 to more than 30,000, which in turn balloons Udio’s potential damages exposure from $50 million to a whopping $4.5 billion. According to Sony, the smaller subset of songs in the original lawsuit was merely a “minuscule, illustrative fraction of the recordings Udio had actually copied.” Sony says it wasn’t until it began the legal discovery process and got access to Udio’s training data that it learned just how many Sony-owned recordings had been allegedly ripped from YouTube and fed into the AI model. Procedurally speaking, Sony had no choice but to bring a new lawsuit if it wanted to increase the amount of music in the case. Sony previously tried to add these new recordings to the original lawsuit, but Udio argued that expanding the dataset two years into the process would amount to “indefinitely derailing the litigation.” Related Musicians Pen Letter, Warning About AI Music Deals: ‘Innovation Cannot Be Used to Override Artists’ Rights’ A federal judge agreed with Udio last month and refused to let Sony amend the first lawsuit, writing that doing so “would substantially prejudice defendants and unduly delay the resolution of this action.” He acknowledged, however, that a second lawsuit was a possibility: “I recognize that plaintiffs have the right to seek to stop infringement of, and recover damages for, all copyrighted works. But there is no requirement that it be done in this lawsuit,” wrote Judge Alvin K. Hellerstein. Udio has maintained that its training process was fair