Source: sud.ua

Sony Music filed a new lawsuit against Udio, alleging the AI service trained its music-generation model on more than 30,000 Sony sound recordings without obtaining a license. Udio is described as a service that uses artificial intelligence to create songs from simple text prompts, and Sony says some catalog recordings were allegedly downloaded directly from YouTube to train the model, with specific works by artists such as Beyoncé, Bob Dylan, Michael Jackson, and Elvis Presley cited in the complaint. The label seeks statutory damages up to $150,000 per work, and applying that figure to 30,000 recordings could raise potential compensation by several billion dollars; the newly asserted claims are said to increase possible damages against Udio from roughly $50 million to nearly $4.5 billion. Udio’s response, as reported, invokes the fair use doctrine under certain conditions in American law.

Sony states it only fully appreciated the scope of the alleged use after discovery when its lawyers accessed the data used to train Udio’s model and, using audio-fingerprinting technology, allegedly identified hundreds of thousands of Sony recordings, with the current 30,000 compositions representing part of that set. Sony previously attempted to include these recordings in a 2024 lawsuit, but a court at the end of June required the company to file a separate suit for the recordings. Universal Music and Warner Music, which also filed suits against Udio, later reached licensing agreements with the service, while Sony remains the only one of the three largest labels continuing the litigation. The complaint, discovery findings, asserted damages, and procedural posture are those reported by the source.