Sony sues AI music generator Udio after allegedly finding 30,000+ copyrighted songs in training data

Sony Music has filed a fresh lawsuit against AI music generator Udio, claiming the company trained its AI using thousands of copyrighted songs without permission. According to Dexerto, the complaint filed in the Southern District of New York identifies 30,117 Sony-owned tracks in Udio’s training data, including recordings from artists such as Beyoncé, Michael Jackson, Harry Styles, Mariah Carey, and Elvis Presley. Sony says that figure is only a fraction of what its investigators uncovered during a forensic review.

The lawsuit marks the second legal battle between Sony and Udio. Sony and its affiliated labels first sued the AI company in June 2024, but the music giant says it only discovered the full extent of the alleged copying after gaining access to Udio’s source code and training data through the earlier case’s discovery process. According to the filing, hundreds of thousands of Sony-owned recordings may have been used to train the AI system.

Sony also alleges that many of those recordings were obtained through stream ripping, a process that extracts audio directly from YouTube videos using a tool called YT-DLP to bypass the platform’s copy protections. The company argues this shows deliberate efforts to acquire copyrighted music without authorization, adding another layer to its copyright claims.

It really makes you wonder how many more songs could be caught up in this

Udio has previously acknowledged that its AI models were trained using a large collection of sound recordings gathered from across the internet and has admitted those recordings likely included music owned by Sony. However, the company has consistently argued that using copyrighted material to train AI models qualifies as fair use under U.S. copyright law.

Sony strongly disagrees with that argument. In its latest complaint, the company says Udio’s licensing agreements with other major record labels, including Universal Music Group and Warner Music Group, weaken its fair use defense because they suggest the company recognizes that licenses are required to legally use copyrighted recordings.

Sony is seeking up to $150,000 in damages for each allegedly infringed recording named in the lawsuit, along with a court order preventing Udio from continuing to use the disputed material. The case is part of a growing wave of legal disputes between record labels and AI music companies as AI-generated songs become more advanced, commercially successful, and increasingly appear on streaming platforms and even charts like iTunes.

Record labels argue that training AI on copyrighted recordings without permission threatens the value of their music catalogs and the livelihoods of artists, while AI companies continue to maintain that the practice is protected under existing fair use laws. No trial date has been set, and it remains unclear how the outcome of the original 2024 lawsuit could affect this newly filed case.