Justice v. Suno / Justice v. Udio: Independent Artists Take On the AI Platforms Directly

Cases: Justice v. Suno, Inc. (D. Mass.), filed June 14, 2025 · Justice v. Uncharted Labs, Inc. (d/b/a Udio) (S.D.N.Y.), filed June 16, 2025 — docket numbers to be confirmed via CourtListener

While the major labels pursued their own suits against Suno and Udio, a separate class action emerged from outside the majors entirely. Anthony Justice, a full-time truck driver whose song "Last of the Cowboys" has been streamed more than 8 million times, filed putative class-action complaints against Suno and Udio in June 2025 alongside 5th Wheel Records, seeking to represent independent artists whose recordings were allegedly used to train the two platforms without permission or compensation.

Suno moved to dismiss key claims, arguing that its AI-generated outputs do not "contain anything like a sample" of any existing recording — a framing meant to distinguish AI-generated music from traditional sampling-based infringement claims, where a portion of the actual original recording is embedded in a new work. In opposing the labels' claims more broadly, Suno has also pointed to two rulings finding AI training to be transformative fair use: Bartz v. Anthropic, in which Judge William Alsup found Anthropic's use of books to train Claude "spectacularly" transformative because the model's output didn't resemble the source material, and Kadrey v. Meta Platforms, which reached a similar conclusion. Music Business Worldwide has noted that reasoning developed in book-training cases may not map cleanly onto music, where audible similarity between an AI output and a specific recording is often more direct and more easily demonstrated than textual similarity in prose.

The case drew additional attention in mid-2026 when a new attorney joined the plaintiffs' side: a lawyer whose prior work included a landmark quarter-trillion-dollar settlement against the tobacco industry — a signal, per MBW's reporting, that the independent-artist plaintiffs are building out litigation resources comparable to what the major labels have deployed in their own parallel cases.

For independent artists and smaller labels, this case matters beyond its own outcome: it tests whether the legal theories developed in major-label litigation against AI platforms are similarly available to rights holders without a major label's resources or negotiating leverage, and whether a settlement track like the one the majors have used with Suno and Udio becomes available to independent plaintiffs as well.

Source reporting: Music Business Worldwide, "Why a fight over 61,000 recordings could shape the future of AI music licensing" and "Suno's latest legal opponent fought the tobacco industry – and won a quarter of a trillion dollars".

Key Filings

• Complaint against Suno, filed June 14, 2025 (D. Mass.)
• Complaint against Udio, filed June 16, 2025 (S.D.N.Y.)
• Suno's motion to dismiss key claims — filing date and docket number to be confirmed via CourtListener