Sony and UMG file fresh copyright lawsuit over Suno’s v6 model
The labels say Suno’s latest system inherits unlicensed training data and falls outside any licensing deals.
Sony and Universal Music Group have filed another copyright case against Suno, alleging its v6 system carries forward infringement through earlier models rather than being built independently. The labels say those earlier systems learned from unlicensed recordings taken from YouTube and elsewhere; they describe this chain as “model laundering,” and Sony also alleges that Suno used distillation to train v6. The companies argue that the model’s lineage matters because Suno retained unauthorized copies of their recordings, and they remain outside its licensing agreements. When v6 launched, Suno’s Jack Brody said its training set was new and included user data, but offered no further details.
Why it matters
The new lawsuit puts fresh pressure on how AI music systems are trained and marketed. Sony and Universal Music Group argue that Suno’s v6 model still benefits from earlier systems they say were built on unlicensed recordings, accusing the company of model laundering and distillation rather than a clean break. Because the labels have no licensing agreement with Suno, the case challenges both the legitimacy of v6’s training data and Suno’s public claims that it used a new dataset that includes user content.
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Sources
- The Verge