Law360 (June 5, 2026, 7:49 PM EDT) -- The American Federation of Musicians of the United States and Canada claims Universal Music Group and Warner Music Group violated its members' collective bargaining agreement by licensing sound recordings to two artificial intelligence companies without compensating the musicians involved, according to a lawsuit filed Friday in New York federal court.

AFM, an AFL-CIO-affiliated labor union representing 70,000 professional musicians, says in its complaint that Universal and Warner, in June 2024, went after those AI companies, Suno and Udio, for the unauthorized and uncompensated use of sound recordings, accusing them of "replacing the work of human artists with massive quantities of AI created sounds."

But now, having reached settlements last year, the "defendants 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," the suit said.

According to the complaint, Suno and Udio's platforms allow users to produce new digital music files that "emulate the sound, performance characteristics, expressive qualities, and commercial appeal of human-created sound recordings." For instance, prompts on both platforms have resulted in outputs that resemble familiar songs such as "I Get Around" by the Beach Boys, "Billie Jean" by Michael Jackson and "I Got You (I Feel Good)" by James Brown, the suit says.

Both Warner and Universal have received "significant compensation" from Suno and Udio for the past copyright violations, and will continue to receive revenue from the AI companies by licensing large portions of their music catalogs, according to the complaint.

While the music companies are protecting their own interests, 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," AFM said, adding that it has "aggressively fought" to make sure musicians receive compensation and credit for sound recordings as new technologies emerge.

As such, the AFM's collective bargaining agreement, or Sound Recording Labor Agreement, includes a "new use" provision that requires music companies to notify the union of licenses and other transfers of music rights that will be used for any purposes not covered by the CBA, according to the suit. It also requires music companies to compensate the individual musicians who worked on those recordings, the suit says.

"Despite the SRLA's new use provision and despite defendants' acknowledgment of the threat that generative AI poses to recording artists, defendants have failed to compensate musicians whose music has already been 'scraped,' 'ingested' and copied, exploited, and incorporated into the development of Suno's and Udio's AI models under defendants' settlement agreements with them," AFM said.

What's more, Universal and Warner have "not even provided basic information required under the SRLA to the AFM about which recordings were licensed," it added.

The suit asserts one claim for breach of a labor contract.

It seeks declarations that Universal and Warner violated the Sound Recording Labor Agreement by failing to pay musicians for the use of the sound recordings and by failing to provide information to the AFM regarding the licensing of sound recordings to the AI platforms.

It also seeks unspecified damages, litigation costs, attorney fees and interest.

Representatives for the parties did not immediately respond to requests for comment Friday.

The musicians are represented by Eyad Asad of Cohen Weiss & Simon LLP.

Counsel information for the defendants was not immediately available.

The case is American Federation of Musicians of the United States and Canada v. Warner Music Group Corp. et al., case number 1:26-cv-04760, in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York.

--Editing by Drashti Mehta.

For a reprint of this article, please contact reprints@law360.com.