Sony Music Entertainment has once again sued AI music generator Udio, alleging that the startup illegally copied more than 30,000 songs from artists including Beyoncé, Harry Styles and Elvis Presley to train its models.

Sony first filed lawsuits against Udio and its competitor Suno in June 2024 along with labels Universal Music Group and Warner Music Group. In the new lawsuit, filed Monday in the District Court for the Southern District of New York, Sony claimed that discovery in the case revealed that 30,117 tracks were found among Udio’s training data sets. Last month, U.S. District Court Judge Alvin K. Hellerstein denied Sony’s attempt to add those tracks to its original lawsuit, prompting the label to file a new complaint to protect its copyright.

“Fundamental principles of copyright law dictate that copying protected sound recordings for the purpose of developing a commercial artificial intelligence product like Udio requires the permission of the rights holders,” Sony alleged in its complaint. “Otherwise, such AI offerings will erode the value of artistic works that comprise the essential raw materials that allow them to function in the first place. If not subject to existing and long-standing legal restrictions, such products could supplant, rather than support, genuine human creativity.”

Representatives for Sony and Udio did not respond to immediate requests for comment. Udio claimed in an April response to Sony’s initial lawsuit that while it admitted it trained its models on copyrighted songs uploaded to YouTube, such training amounted to fair use because its platform used “a background technological process, invisible to the public, in the service of creating a new, ultimately non-infringing product.”

The case comes as companies in the media and entertainment industries, from Hollywood studios to record labels to news organizations, try to figure out how to interact with AI while protecting their copyrighted work. Since the original lawsuit, both Universal Music Group and Warner Music Group have settled their respective cases against Udio and signed licensing agreements with the artificial intelligence startup, which is preparing a new industry-backed model for launch later this year. (Sony and Universal are still fighting Suno in court.)

But such deals show that Udio could have licensed the tracks from Sony rather than supposedly ripping them from YouTube, the label claimed.

“At its core, this case is about ensuring that copyright continues to fuel human invention and imagination, as it has for centuries,” Sony said in its lawsuit. “Achieving this end does not require curbing technological innovation, but it does require that Udio comply with copyright laws and respect the creators whose works allow it to function in the first place.”

The company is asking for at least $150,000 for each infringed work and for the court to prevent Udio from using its work to train its models.