IP Law Daily, COPYRIGHT NEWS—Proposed class action takes aim at AI music generator Udio.com, (Oct 21, 2025)

By Steven D. Cole, J.D.

A collaboration of independent musicians has filed a proposed class action alleging that the popular AI music generator illegally copied their sound recordings and lyrics on a massive scale to train its commercial platform.

The 100-page complaint, filed on October 15, 2025, in the United States District Court for the Northern District of Illinois, alleges that Uncharted Labs, Inc. (doing business as Udio), unlawfully downloaded tens of millions of copyrighted sound recordings for its training dataset. Udio is alleged to have used a deliberate, multistep method to remove or alter copyright management information in order to conceal its illicit activity. This is reportedly the 46th such copyright suit against AI technology providers, and is notable for its focus on the harms suffered by independent artists, as well as its cause of action for a violation of the Illinois Biometric Information Privacy Act, a first-of-its-kind claim in these AI suits (Woulard v. Unchartered Labs, Inc., No. 1:25-cv-12613 (N.D. Ill. Oct. 15, 2025)).

Allegations. According to the complaint, Udio is guilty of multiple surreptitious offenses. First, Udio engaged in “stream ripping” to unlawfully acquire tens of millions of copyrighted sound recordings from the Internet. In the process, Udio bypassed the protections employed by streaming services to prevent unauthorized copying, such as YouTube’s “rolling cipher” system, which controls access to underlying media files. Udio then removed or altered copyright information, such as ID3 tags, artist names, song titles, and copyright notices, in order to anonymize the works and conceal its infringement. Additionally, Udio retrieved song lyrics on a large scale from several websites, including commoncrawl.org, genius.com, azlyrics.com, and musixmatch.com, without securing the necessary licenses.

The complaint meticulously details the allegations of Udio’s wrongdoing, describing the company’s ingestion, training, and output mechanisms. This includes allegations of how the files were anonymized, segmented, and processed, which points to Udio’s knowledge, intent, and systemic practice. The complaint cites Udio’s own promotional language, in the form of public statements and investor comments, to show that Udio’s leadership knew that its model depended on massive copyrighted data ingestion. In all, the complaint alleges 14 distinct federal and Illinois state-law claims.

Although dozens of similar complaints against AI technology providers have been filed, two distinctions make this particular suit stand apart.

First, the alleged harm is primarily focused on that suffered by independent artists, as opposed to major record labels. These musicians and songwriters “have invested time, talent, and resources to create original music, only to see Udio wrongly appropriate and weaponize their work against them,” according to the complaint.

Second, this action is unique among suits against AI music generators in that it alleges a violation of Illinois’ Biometric Information Privacy Act, 740 ILCS 14/1et seq. (BIPA). This law prohibits private entities from obtaining a person’s “biometric identifier” (the definition of which includes voiceprints) without first informing the person and receiving written consent. Even then, a private entity in possession of a biometric identifier may not “sell, lease, trade, or otherwise profit from” such information. 740 ILCS 14/15(c). Nor may an entity “disclose, redisclose, or otherwise disseminate” this information without informed consent. 740 ILCS 14/15(d).

According to the complaint, “[b]y systematically collecting, storing, using, and commercially disseminating Plaintiffs’ biometric voiceprints without consent or notice, Udio has recklessly or intentionally violated multiple provisions of BIPA.” Furthermore, “Udio profited from the collection, capture, storage, and use of Plaintiffs’ biometric identifiers (voiceprints) by embedding them in model parameters and internal corpora to create and sell AI music services, conduct prohibited by 740 ILCS 14/15(c), and disclosed biometric identifiers to employees/contractors and partners through access to retained corpora and evaluation artifacts in violation of 740 ILCS 14/15(d).”

Proposed classes and requested relief. The complaint seeks certification of a main “Copyright Class” that would include all independent artists in the United States who own or exclusively control registered copyrights in original sound recordings since February 15, 1972, that appear in any dataset that Udio or its agents copied, ingested, or exploited for AI training during the unspecified class period. A second proposed class would include independent artists who own or exclusively control copyrights in original sound recordings that were unregistered with the U.S. Copyright Office at the time that Udio or its agents copied, ingested, or exploited them for AI training. Ten additional proposed subclasses are identified, pertaining to, inter alia, allegations of Udio’s copyright violations related to song lyrics and contraventions of Illinois law.

The complaint alleges several claims of direct copyright infringement, contributory copyright infringement, vicarious copyright infringement, violations of the access control and copyright management provisions of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, violations of the Illinois Biometric Information Privacy Act and the Illinois Right of Publicity Act, and unjust enrichment under Illinois common law. The plaintiffs request statutory damages, an injunction to halt the alleged infringement, and the destruction of all AI models trained on the copyrighted works.

The Case is No. 1:25-cv-12613.

Judge: Ellis, S.

Attorneys: Ross Kimbarovsky (Loevy & Loevy) for David Woulard, Attack the Sound LLC, Stan Burjek, James Burjek, Berk Ergoz, Hamza Jilani, Maatkara Wilson, Arjun Singh, Magnus Fiennes, and Michael Mell.

Companies: Attack the Sound LLC; Unchartered Labs, Inc., d/b/a Udio.com

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