Sony and UMG Sue Suno Again, Claiming Its New AI Model Launders Copyrighted Music

Sony and Universal Music Group filed a new lawsuit against AI music platform Suno in September 2026, alleging that its latest model continues to infringe on their copyrights despite the company’s claims of a fresh start.

The labels argue that Suno’s v6 model — which the company said was “trained from the ground up, with a new set of data” — is still tainted because it was trained on outputs generated by earlier Suno models. Those earlier models, Sony and UMG contend, were themselves built using unlicensed music ripped from YouTube and other sources.

In their complaint, the labels describe the practice as “model laundering.” The filing states: “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.”

Sony further alleges that Suno used a technique called distillation to train v6, effectively teaching the new model to replicate the results of earlier “teacher” models that were built on infringing data. The complaint argues that “even a model not directly trained on Plaintiffs’ recordings is informed by, and benefits from, Suno’s retained unauthorized copies.”

When v6 launched, Suno’s Jack Brody confirmed to The Verge that the model was trained on “user data,” including user “creations,” but declined to provide further details. Suno did not offer additional comment when contacted again.

Sony and UMG are among the notable holdouts that have not signed a licensing agreement with Suno. The new suit suggests that, in the labels’ view, any Suno model built on a chain of previously infringing data — rather than entirely licensed material — may remain legally vulnerable.