A federal magistrate blocked Universal Music Group and Sony Music Entertainment from obtaining Suno’s settlement agreement with Warner Music Group in April. Now, the AI startup is pointing to the labels’ “mischaracterization” of the ruling as they attempt to reopen the dispute. That’s according to Suno’s response to the labels’ objection to the magistrate judge’s April 6 discovery ruling.
Source: Suno fights to keep Warner Music settlement terms away from UMG and Sony
The Red Hot Chili Peppers sold the rights to their recorded catalog to Warner Music Group in a deal worth more than $300 million, sources familiar with the matter tell The Hollywood Reporter, with WMG acquiring the catalog through the company’s joint venture with Bain Capital. WMG first announced its $1.2 billion joint venture catalog acquisition vehicle with Bain last July and reported in its May 7 earnings report that they’d spent $650 million on catalogs since the JV’s launch,
Source: Red Hot Chili Peppers Ink $300 Million-Plus Deal With Warner Music to Sell Catalog
Tencent Music Entertainment, China’s largest music streaming service provider, says it took down more than 250,000 policy-violating songs and reviewed over 600,000 cases involving “high-risk copyright content” across its platforms last year. The figures come as TME said it bolstered compliance and risk management across key areas in 2025, including copyright licensing, emerging AI risks, and its overseas business expansion.
Source: Tencent Music took down over 250,000 songs amid ’emerging AI risks’
An actress accused the director James Cameron of stealing her likeness to create an “Avatar” character in a lawsuit filed on Tuesday in California — a case that reflects a core fear among Hollywood performers in the artificial intelligence age: losing control of their own faces. The actress, Q’orianka Kilcher, also sued Disney, which controls the multibillion-dollar “Avatar” franchise, which started in 2009.
Source: ‘Avatar’ Suit Focuses on Hot Topic in A.I. Age: A Character’s Face
A coalition of 81 cultural and media organizations in France — spanning the music, film, publishing, and press industries — has called on the country’s National Assembly to schedule debate on a bill that would create a legal presumption that AI providers use copyrighted content. The bill was adopted unanimously by the French Senate last month. It has since been transmitted to the National Assembly, but has not yet been placed on the legislative agenda, a step the coalition says is now urgent.
Source: Bill in France would force AI firms to prove they didn’t use copyrighted content to train models
Five major publishers — Hachette, Macmillan, McGraw Hill, Elsevier and Cengage — and the best-selling novelist Scott Turow have filed a class-action copyright infringement lawsuit against Meta and its founder and chief executive, Mark Zuckerberg. The complaint, which was filed on Tuesday morning in United States District Court for the Southern District of New York, accuses Meta and Zuckerberg of illegally using millions of copyrighted works to train their artificial intelligence program Llama
Source: Five Publishers and Scott Turow Sue Meta and Mark Zuckerberg
A group of ten music industry organizations formally opposed a proposed 43% average increase to copyright registration fees, arguing the hike would lock out independent creators out of the registration system. The filing was in response to the Copyright Office’s proposed fee schedule published in March 2026. The proposal reflects historic inflation since the last fee study in 2020 and projected inflation over the next three years, the Copyright Office said.
Source: The US Copyright Office is hiking registration fees by 43%.
For now, most established collecting societies are not representing GenAI-music creators, amid concerns over the training models of the platforms that they use – and also questions about whether their work even qualifies for copyright protection. A new organization called Aimpro is hoping to fill the gap, pitching itself as “the first PRO designed to serve creators of generative AI works, allowing AI music creators to collect royalties for their work on a global basis”.
Source: There’s now a collecting society just for AI-generated music
Udio is doubling down on its longstanding fair use arguments and defending its training-related ingestion of audio data from YouTube. “Udio admits that it obtained audio data from YouTube for use as training data,” the text reads, proceeding to elaborate that Udio “acquired some of its training data by utilizing YT-DLP,” which is reportedly a stream-ripping platform. With that, the stream-ripping sub-dispute is out in the open – with serious implications for the lengthy list of complaints against AI developers.
Source: Sony Music v. Udio Legal Battle Heats Up; AI Music Generator Admits to Obtaining Data from YouTube
The feature is currently limited to US desktop users of YouTube Studio. A global launch and rollout to Studio mobile are planned for later this year. Rather than having to remove or re-edit videos that have triggered copyright claims, creators will now have the option to swap out the offending audio for an AI-generated, royalty-free alternative — keeping the video live and potentially restoring its ability to be monetized.
Source: YouTube creators hit by music copyright claims can now replace tracks with AI