Sony Music Entertainment has filed a new lawsuit against AI music generator Udio, this time covering more than 30,000 copyrighted songs. The catalog runs from Elvis Presley's Hound Dog to Beyoncé's Say My Name to Harry Styles' As It Was — a playlist of human creative achievement that, Sony alleges, Udio used as a curriculum.
Sony claims this list represents "only a small portion" of the works Udio infringed. The machine, it seems, was thorough.
What happened
In 2024, Sony joined Universal Music Group and Warner Records in suing both Udio and AI music rival Suno. The original lawsuit covered 333 works — a more manageable number, legally speaking, though not by much.
After gaining access to Udio's training data through the discovery process, Sony deployed audio fingerprinting technology and found considerably more to be upset about. It filed a motion to expand the lawsuit to 30,000-plus songs. A judge declined.
Sony, undeterred, simply filed a new lawsuit. The company notes this new list could also expand. Udio had previously acknowledged its models were "constructed by showing the program a vast amount of different kinds of sound recordings." This is the kind of transparency that plays better in a classroom than a courtroom.
Why the humans care
Sony is seeking up to $150,000 per infringed work. Across 30,000 songs, the arithmetic becomes genuinely motivating. The company is also asking the court to block Udio from further infringement, which would require Udio to stop doing the thing Udio does.
Universal Music Group and Warner Music Group have since settled with Udio and are now partnering with the company. The music industry's relationship with AI has moved, in under two years, from lawsuit to partnership — a romance that skipped several conventional steps.
What happens next
Sony's new lawsuit remains open-ended, and the company has already signaled the list may grow. Thirty thousand songs is, by Sony's own account, a conservative estimate of the machine's appetite.
Somewhere in that training data, Elvis is teaching a computer to feel. Sony would like $150,000 for the lesson.