- Google is being sued for allegedly training its Lyria 3 music AI on songs uploaded to YouTube.
The complaint, filed on June 5, 2026 in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, names 12 independent musicians as plaintiffs. They claim Google harvested their tracks from YouTube to feed the Lyria model, violating copyright. Google responded with a motion to dismiss, arguing the lawsuit rests on an “unsupported hypothesis” that the company trained on the plaintiffs’ specific works and that, “even accepting their untested allegations as fact, the Complaint cannot stand.”
If the claim holds, it could force a major tech firm to rethink how it sources data for generative models, especially in the music sector where rights are tightly managed. Creators may gain leverage to demand transparency or compensation for AI training use.
The case adds to a growing wave of lawsuits targeting big‑tech AI practices, but courts have historically given platforms broad leeway to use publicly posted content.