The American Federation of Musicians has filed suit against Universal Music Group and Warner Music Group, alleging the companies allowed AI firms Suno and Udio to use recordings featuring its members without pay or credit.
The lawsuit was filed Friday, June 5, in U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York.
The complaint focuses on settlement and licensing deals the companies made with the AI platforms, which the union says triggered a “new use” provision in its collective bargaining agreement.
The union says that provision requires labels to compensate musicians when recordings are reused for new commercial purposes.
“The AFM brings this lawsuit because defendants, two of the largest music companies in the world, have licensed sound recordings on which AFM-represented musicians have worked, without compensation or credit, to two AI companies,” the complaint states.
“At the same time, they have refused to provide information to the AFM about which recordings and whose work is being licensed.”
The union, represented by attorney Eyad Asad of Cohen, Weiss and Simon, is seeking unspecified damages and a court order requiring the labels to identify which recordings were used to train AI systems.
Both companies settled copyright lawsuits against Udio at the end of 2025, and Warner also reached a deal with Suno to license music catalogs for AI models expected this year.
The AFM says those deals generated revenue for the labels but not for the session musicians whose performances were used.
“While the Defendants protected their own interests and created a significant source of new revenue with the retrospective settlements and prospective licenses, they have refused to compensate the musicians whose work – created with their own instruments and through their talent, creativity, and hard work – is fed into AI machines for profit,” the AFM said in the complaint.
The union says the labels are “allowing those same AI companies to use the work of AFM-represented musicians to do exactly what they warned about: Training AI models to generate supposedly ‘new’ sound recordings derived from music ingested into their models.”
According to the complaint, the companies “licensed substantial portions of their music catalogs to the AI companies” for training and will continue to earn revenue from those deals.
“Defendants have failed to share in the settlement proceeds and future revenue with those same artists whose music was copied, used for training, and incorporated into the development of the AI models and platforms now being commercially exploited as a new use of the performances embodied in those recordings, despite their self-congratulatory claims of protecting those same artists,” the AFM said.
Universal, Warner and Sony Music sued Suno and Udio in 2024 in a case coordinated by the Recording Industry Association of America alleging “mass infringement” of copyright.
Universal settled with Udio in October 2025, announcing a “compensatory legal settlement” and licensing agreements for an AI music platform expected in 2026.
Warner reached a settlement and licensing deal with Udio in November 2025. Days later, Warner became the first major label to settle its lawsuit with Suno. The deal included the AI company acquiring concert-discovery platform Songkick from Warner.
Questions about how artists will be paid have persisted since the deals were announced.
The day after Universal’s Udio settlement, the nonprofit Music Artists Coalition questioned how much revenue would reach artists and how consent would be handled.
In response, a Universal spokesperson said the company “has been at the forefront of protecting the rights and advancing the interests of artists and songwriters in the age of AI—striking responsible AI licensing agreements to ensure they are compensated, leading the charge for legislation to further protect them and taking legal action against bad actors.”
“The AFM chose this route during our collective bargaining negotiations, and we will continue to work to resolve any issues through these negotiations, as we have in the past,” the statement added.
Warner said it is “growing the value of music by establishing guardrails and architecting a healthy AI ecosystem on the behalf of artists everywhere,” and called the lawsuit “unproductive” amid ongoing negotiations.
Sony Music Entertainment is not named in the complaint and has not reached settlements with Suno or Udio.
The lawsuit was filed two days after Suno announced a $400 million funding round valuing the company at $5.4 billion.
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