Global music giants Sony Music and Universal Music Group (UMG) have initiated a new lawsuit against the developers of the popular AI service Suno. The subject of the dispute is Suno's latest music generation model, v6, which plaintiffs accuse of large-scale copyright infringement. According to rights holders, creating new algorithms did not solve the problem of intellectual property protection, but merely masked the primary use of unlicensed materials.
The essence of the rights holders' claims against Suno v6
According to the lawsuit, the v6 model presented by developers was trained on user data previously generated by earlier AI versions. Those, in turn, were built on a massive base of unlicensed music massively downloaded from YouTube and other unprotected digital sources. The plaintiffs emphasize that this practice is a sophisticated form of pirated content “laundering,” where the value of stolen recordings is artificially transferred to intermediate and final products.
Suno developers' position and the distillation method
In response to the accusations, Suno Chief Product Officer Jack Brody told industry resources that the v6 model was supposedly “trained from scratch on a new dataset,” including legitimate user uploads. However, music corporations insist on the use of a technique known as distillation. This technical method allows the new model to effectively mimic and reproduce the output of old, compromised algorithms, making version v6 a direct beneficiary of piracy.
Contradictory data
While Suno's management strongly denies direct borrowing and insists on the complete legal purity of the updated dataset for version v6, representatives of Sony and UMG present opposing arguments. Music labels argue that even in the absence of direct downloading of protected tracks, the current architecture of the service critically depends on previously accumulated illegal databases. Experts note that the trial could set a major precedent in the regulation of artificial intelligence.
Implications for the generative AI industry
The new lawsuit highlights a deep crisis of trust between technology companies and the traditional entertainment industry. Experts agree that if courts support the position of Sony and Universal, creators of generative AI models will have to completely rethink their approaches to dataset formation. Currently, Suno remains a primary target for record labels without having signed a single official licensing agreement with them.
