Sony and UMG are suing Suno again

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 later confirmed to Engadget that data includes “creations” from users, but would not elaborate further when reached for comment.

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.

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