Sony and UMG have filed a new lawsuit against Suno, again accusing the AI music company of copyright infringement. In a complaint shared with The Verge, the two major music companies allege that Suno engaged in what they call model laundering. The labels argue that training a new model on the outputs of an infringing model does not remove that infringement but instead carries the value of their protected recordings forward.
The complaint states that Suno’s v6 model is not a fresh start but the product of the same improper origin. Sony and UMG claim the value of their expression flowed from copied recordings into the earlier models, then into those models’ outputs, and finally into v6. The labels say even a model not directly trained on their recordings still draws on and benefits from Suno’s retained unauthorized copies.
Suno has defended v6 since its launch. Jack Brody, of Suno, told The Verge the model was trained from the ground up with a new set of data that included user data, but he did not provide further details. Suno spokesperson Rachel Racusen later confirmed to The Verge that the data includes creations from users.
Racusen said v6 was trained on content licensed from Suno’s partners, interactions including creations and preference signals from its community, and the accumulated learnings from its team. She did not specify whether that data included uploaded audio or outputs based on uploaded audio. The complaint also alleges that Suno used distillation to train v6, claiming it was trained to replicate the results of its earlier teacher models, which the labels say were created using infringing data.
The dispute is part of a broader run of AI and music industry legal activity. UMG is separately suing DistroKid for alleged deceptive trade practices and blatant copyright infringement. Roland has also moved into generative AI music with Melody Flip. For US listeners and creators, the case adds another layer of uncertainty over how AI music tools are built and what data sits behind them.
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