Sony filed a lawsuit against AI service Udio: demands billions of dollars for training on music without permission
Sony Music filed a new lawsuit against Udio — a service that uses artificial intelligence to create songs based on a simple text request, writes MBW.
The music label accuses the company of training its AI model on over 30 thousand Sony sound recordings without any permission.
In order to learn how to create music, the AI model must listen to a huge volume of musical works. Sony claims that part of its catalog was directly downloaded from YouTube to train Udio’s model.
Among the compositions mentioned in the lawsuit are songs by Beyoncé, Bob Dylan, Michael Jackson, and Elvis Presley.
This is not the first attempt by the company to hold Udio accountable. Previously, Sony tried to include these recordings in a lawsuit filed in 2024, but at the end of June the court denied this and required the company to file a separate lawsuit.
Sony is seeking up to $150,000 for each work. If this amount is applied to 30 thousand recordings, the potential compensation could reach several billion dollars. The new claims alone increase possible damages for Udio from approximately $50 million to nearly $4.5 billion.
Sony stated that it fully realized the scale of the violation only after the discovery phase began, when the company’s lawyers gained access to the data used to train Udio’s model. Using audio fingerprinting technology, they allegedly identified hundreds of thousands of Sony recordings, and the current 30 thousand compositions are only part of this array.
In response to the accusations, Udio refers to the fair use doctrine, which under certain conditions in American law allows the use of copyrighted works without paying royalties to the rights holder.
At the same time, Sony has effectively remained the only major music company continuing the legal battle. Universal Music and Warner Music, which also filed lawsuits against Udio, later reached licensing agreements with the service.
Thus, Sony became the last of the three largest music labels to refuse a settlement and decided to continue the court proceedings.
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