Sony and Universal Music Group have filed another lawsuit against the artificial intelligence music company Suno, escalating an ongoing dispute over the use of copyrighted recordings. The two record labels remain notable holdouts, having declined to sign a licensing agreement with the AI firm.
At the centre of the new complaint is Suno’s latest v6 model. The labels argue that this system continues to infringe their copyrights because it was trained on user outputs generated by previous versions of the software. Those earlier models, they contend, were themselves trained on unlicensed music taken from YouTube and other online sources without permission.
The ‘model laundering’ allegation
In their complaint, Sony and UMG accuse Suno of what they describe as “model laundering”. According to the labels, building a new model on the outputs of an infringing model does not remove the underlying infringement. Instead, they say, the practice launders it, carrying the value of the copyright holders’ expression forward from the copied recordings into the newer system.
The argument suggests that even where a fresh model does not directly ingest protected recordings, any material derived from a previous infringing model still carries the same legal problems. This positions the training pipeline itself, rather than a single dataset, as the focus of the dispute.
A continuing legal standoff
The action reflects a wider divide within the music industry over how AI companies source the material used to train generative systems. While some rights holders have reached licensing arrangements, Sony and UMG have taken a different path, pursuing legal action rather than commercial agreement.
By targeting the v6 model specifically, the labels are testing whether newer generations of AI music tools can be considered legally distinct from the models that preceded them. The complaint frames the question as one of whether infringement can be resolved simply by iterating on existing systems.
The dispute forms part of a broader pattern of litigation involving major rights holders and companies developing generative audio tools. Suno has previously faced legal challenges from the recording industry over the way its technology is built and trained.
Sony and Universal Music Group have filed the new suit while continuing to remain outside any licensing arrangement with Suno.
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