As generative AI music tools move into the mainstream, Sony Music Entertainment and its affiliated labels have mounted a high‑stakes copyright battle against Udio, a text‑to‑music service developed by Uncharted Labs in New York federal court. The case stems from coordinated lawsuits first filed in June 2024 by major record companies, including Sony, Universal Music Group, and Warner Records, alleging mass infringement of copyrighted sound recordings used to train AI music models without authorization.
Udio is described as a commercial text‑to‑music generator that produces tracks intended to compete directly with label catalogs, raising concerns that the service exploits decades of recorded music while bypassing licensing regimes.
Sony’s latest filings considerably broaden the scope of the dispute, asserting that Udio copied and ingested at least 30,442 copyrighted sound recordings into its training data without permission. The original complaint focused on 333 works, but a proposed expansion and a second lawsuit now push the total asserted recordings beyond 30,000, multiplying the potential exposure for Udio.
Sony calculates statutory damages of up to 150,000 dollars per infringed work under the United States Copyright Act, yielding an estimated liability approaching 4.5 billion dollars across the asserted catalog. Coverage from industry outlets has highlighted the jump from roughly 50 million dollars in exposure under the initial 333‑work case to multibillion‑dollar stakes once tens of thousands of recordings are included.
The complaints against Udio center on allegations that the company violated the Copyright Act by reproducing and using protected sound recordings to train its generative models without licenses or consent from rights holders.
Sony and its affiliates assert that Udio obtained many of these recordings by scraping or stream‑ripping audio from platforms such as YouTube, circumventing technological protection measures designed to prevent unauthorized copying. On that basis, the lawsuits add claims under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, accusing Udio of bypassing access controls and security mechanisms in order to collect restricted files for training.
The labels further argue that AI‑generated tracks output by the service function as unauthorized derivative works that draw on, and in some cases closely resemble, copyrighted recordings from their catalogs. Through the federal actions, Sony seeks declaratory judgments confirming infringement, injunctions barring Udio from further unlicensed use of its recordings, and statutory damages calculated on a per‑work basis.
Procedurally, the Udio litigation began as part of landmark twin cases announced by the Recording Industry Association of America, with one suit against Suno in Massachusetts and the other against Uncharted Labs in the Southern District of New York.
Over time, Universal Music Group and Warner Music Group have both reached settlements with Udio and dismissed their claims, leaving Sony and its affiliated labels as the remaining major‑label plaintiffs. Those settlements paved the way for a pre-cleared training model requiring that Udio train future AI music systems only on licensed catalog recordings.
As of mid‑2026, Sony’s cases against Udio remain in pretrial phases, with no fair‑use rulings issued. The expanded claims over more than 30,000 recordings underscore that AI training on catalog music has become a central battleground.
