Overview
- Sony filed a new complaint after discovery allegedly identified 30,117 Sony-owned tracks in Udio’s training data, a claim the label says shows Udio copied recordings from sources like YouTube without permission.
- The filing follows a recent judge’s denial to add those tracks to Sony’s original suit and represents Sony’s escalation to seek statutory damages and court-ordered limits on Udio’s use of its catalog.
- Sony seeks statutory damages that can reach $150,000 per infringed work plus an injunction to bar Udio from using Sony recordings to train or tune its models.
- Udio has previously said it trained on copyrighted music but called that backend process fair use and said it does not aim to reproduce training-set recordings, while Universal and Warner have already licensed their catalogs to Udio.
- The case could decide whether unlicensed copying to train generative models is actionable and shape whether labels pursue licensing deals or litigation in future AI-music disputes, with direct consequences for artists, streaming markets, and AI business models.