Sony Music label files new lawsuit against AI startup Udio

Sony Music Entertainment filed a new lawsuit Monday against AI startup Udio, accusing the company of infringing more than 30,000 recordings that Sony says were scraped from YouTube without permission to train Udio's song-generating technology, the Los Angeles Times reported. Udio lets users type prompts describing a song they want, and Sony says the platform can produce audio that closely resembles copyrighted recordings, including music by Alicia Keys, Dolly Parton and Elvis Presley.

"Neither Udio, nor any other generative AI company, can be allowed to advance toward this goal by trampling the rights of copyright owners," Sony said in its complaint, which seeks up to $150,000 per infringed work or Udio's actual profits from the alleged infringement, whichever is greater. Udio did not immediately return a request for comment on the new suit; responding to Sony's original 2024 complaint, the company said it stands by its technology and is "uninterested in reproducing content in our training set," comparing its process to how "students listen to music and study scores."

This is not Sony's first run at Udio. The label sued the startup in 2024 alongside Warner Music Group and Universal Music Group, but both of those companies have since struck licensing deals that let Udio use their catalogs, with individual artists choosing whether to opt in. Sony has taken the opposite path, escalating rather than settling, and it and Universal still have separate, ongoing lawsuits against rival AI company Suno, including AI music company Suno hit with two class action lawsuits over data breach, which centers on a data breach rather than copyright.

The case adds to a wider legal tangle around Udio specifically. In August, Copyright case against AI music firm Udio moves to New York covered the ongoing venue fight in the earlier suit, and record labels have also been working on the industry side of the same problem: Major and indie record labels propose rules for AI tracks on the music charts outlines a joint effort to define when AI-generated songs should even be chart-eligible.

Sony's suit lands amid a broader Hollywood split over how to handle generative AI. Some companies, including Disney and Universal, have sued AI firms over alleged copyright theft, while others have chosen partnership instead; "Hunger Games" studio Lionsgate holds an equity stake in AI company Runway as part of an expanded deal between the two.