SerpApi.Org
Sony Music has filed an expanded lawsuit accusing generative AI startup Udio of illegally copying more than 30,000 sound recordings — including works tied to Alicia Keys, Dolly Parton, Elvis Presley, Beyoncé, and Michael Jackson — to train its music-making models without authorization.
The new complaint, filed July 2026 in Manhattan federal court, asserts 30,117 recordings. That is a staggering jump from the 333 tracks named in the original 2024 suit, and Sony alleges the newly listed works are only a subset of hundreds of thousands of recordings it identified after gaining access to Udio's training data during discovery. Sony says it used audio fingerprinting technology to match the material.
At the heart of the expanded case is how Sony alleges Udio got the music in the first place. The label claims many recordings were "stream-ripped" from YouTube using a tool designed to strip the platform's anti-copying protections — a technical circumvention that, if proven, carries its own penalties under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. Sony is seeking the statutory maximum of $150,000 per infringed work, plus circumvention damages, pushing the theoretical exposure as high as $4.5 billion. The original case topped out around $50 million.
So why a second lawsuit instead of simply enlarging the first? Because a judge told Sony it couldn't. In June 2026, U.S. District Judge Alvin K. Hellerstein denied Sony's bid to fold the 30,000-plus recordings into the existing 2024 action, ruling that adding them so late would prejudice Udio and delay the proceedings. Crucially, the judge left the door open, noting Sony was free to pursue those claims — just not in that case. This new filing is Sony taking him up on it.
The expanded suit matters because it sharpens the central legal question hanging over the entire AI-music sector: is training a commercial generative model on copyrighted recordings fair use, or is it mass infringement? Udio has consistently argued the former, acknowledging its models were built on "a vast amount" of recordings and conceding YouTube as a source, while maintaining that learning from existing music is legally protected. Sony is betting that the alleged stream-ripping — deliberately bypassing copy protections — undercuts any fair-use defense before it reaches a jury.
What makes Sony's position notable is that it now stands largely alone. Universal Music Group and Warner Music, which joined the original 2024 action alongside Sony, have since struck licensing deals with Udio rather than litigate to the finish. That leaves Sony as the last major-label holdout still pressing the fight in court — a fork in the road for how the recording industry intends to deal with AI: license it or sue it.
Nothing here has been decided. These are allegations, and Udio has not been found liable for anything. But the case is quickly becoming the highest-stakes test yet of who owns the raw material AI music is built on — and the numbers involved mean the outcome could set the price, and the rules, for every generative-audio company that follows.
