Sony and UMG are suing Suno again - The Verge

Sony and UMG’s latest lawsuit against Suno accuses the company of ‘model laundering’ Sony and UMG’s latest lawsuit against Suno accuses the company of ‘model laundering’ Suno’s AI vocalists could learn a thing or two from this glitchy image. Image: Cath Virginia / The Verge, Getty Images Terrence O'Brien is the Verge’s weekend editor. He’s covered the tech industry for over 18 years and knows a thing or two about synths. Sony and Universal Music Group filed yet another suit against Suno. The labels claim its new v6 model still infringes on their copyrights because it’s trained on user outputs from previous models, which were themselves trained on unlicensed music ripped from YouTube and other sources. Sony and UMG are notable holdouts who did not sign a licensing agreement with Suno. In its complaint shared with The Verge , Sony and UMG accuse Suno of “model laundering,” saying: “Training a ‘new’ model on the outputs of an infringing model does not eliminate the infringement; it launders it, passing the value of Plaintiffs’ expression from the copied recordings into the tainted models, from those models into their outputs, and from those outputs into v6 … V6 is not a fresh start; it is the fruit of the same poisoned tree.” When v6 launched, Suno’s Jack Brody told The Verge it was “trained from the ground up, with a new set of data,” including “user data,” but did not offer details beyond that. Suno spokesperson Rachel Racusen later confirmed to The Verge that data includes “creations” from users, saying, “v6 was trained on content licensed from our partners, interactions including creations and preference signals from our community, and the accumulated learnings from our team,” but did not specify whether that included uploaded audio or outputs based on uploaded audio . Sony further alleges that Suno used distillation to train v6. It claims that it was trained to replicate the results of its previous, “teacher” models, which were created using infringing data. The complaint says that “even a model not directly trained on Plaintiffs’ recordings is informed by, and benefits from, Suno’s retained unauthorized copies.” Essentially, the labels argue that, unless Suno truly starts from scratch, its models will continue to be built on stolen data. Update September 25th, 2026: Added statement from Suno. Follow topics and authors from this story to see more like this in your personalized homepage feed and to receive email updates. Terrence O'Brien The New York Times pitted five musicians against an AI in a songwriting competition. Engram is a sampler that turns broken AI hallucinations into music Lunacy Audio Nova is a place to build and sell your own AI-powered music plug-ins Keurig’s new machine uses plastic-free compressed coffee pucks HP’s answer to the MacBook Neo is thinner, lighter, and comes with OLED An OpenAI safety employee has quit and is sounding the alarm A free daily digest of the news that matters most. By providing your information, you agree to our Terms of Use and our Privacy Policy . We use vendors that may also process your information to help provide our services. This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.