Sony Music Confronts Udio: Use of Over 30,000 Recordings for AI Training Questioned

Sony Music has initiated a new lawsuit against Udio, accusing the company specializing in AI-generated music of using 30,117 sound recordings without permission to train its models. The complaint was filed in the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York and represents a separate proceeding from the suit already initiated in 2024.

This initiative follows a court decision from June 29, which had rejected Sony's request to add over 30,000 recordings to the ongoing proceeding. However, the same decision had recognized the rights holders' ability to bring a new lawsuit to protect the works not included in the original file.

The new lawsuit was filed by Sony Music alongside nine affiliated labels, including Arista Records and LaFace. According to the document, the disputed recordings represent only a part of the works that the company believes have been used without authorization.

Additional Elements Regarding Sony Music's Lawsuit Against Udio

The information gathered during the discovery phase of the first lawsuit allegedly allowed Sony to analyze the training data used by Udio, identifying hundreds of thousands of recordings through audio recognition systems based on so-called audio fingerprints.

The proceeding also recalls that, in response to the first complaint, Udio acknowledged that its models had been trained using a vast amount of audio recordings, admitting that among these there could have been works belonging to the catalogs of the involved labels. Sony further claims that numerous files were obtained from YouTube using tools capable of extracting audio content while bypassing the platform's protections.

Udio has confirmed that it used data from YouTube for training its models, but continues to argue that such use falls under the fair use principle outlined in U.S. law. Meanwhile, Udio has already entered into licensing agreements with several players in the music industry, including Universal Music Group, Warner Music Group, and others, while Sony has not reached any agreement with the company. Through this new lawsuit, Sony is seeking the maximum compensation allowed by law, up to $150,000 for each work deemed violated.