Sony Music AI Training Opt-Out: Terms & Legal Effect

Sony demanded permission and an accounting, from more than 700 companies at once

Sony Music Group published a 'Declaration of AI Training Opt Out' on May 16, 2024, and sent it to more than 700 AI developers and music streaming services in a single mailing. The letter said use of Sony's musical compositions, lyrics, audio recordings, audiovisual recordings, artwork or data to train, develop or commercialize an AI system now required Sony's explicit permission. [1][3]

It also demanded a retroactive accounting: recipients were asked to confirm whether they had already used Sony content without authorization, and if so, to describe what was used, how it was obtained, how many copies were made and whether those copies still existed. Sony did not name the 700 companies it contacted. [1][3]

The letter paired a blanket prohibition with pro-AI language

The declaration said Sony 'supports the development of AI technologies to spur creativity and innovation' and described itself as embracing responsibly produced AI as a creative tool for artists, while stating in the same document that Sony 'expressly prohibits and opts out of any text or data mining, web scraping or similar reproductions' of its catalog for AI purposes absent express permission. [3]

Atlas interpretation: The two claims sit together rather than in tension for Sony's purposes: a rightsholder can back AI tools it licenses while blocking every use it has not licensed, and the declaration is written to preserve exactly that distinction. What it does not do is describe which uses Sony itself considers acceptable, or on what terms it would grant the permission it says the letter's targets now need. [3]

An opt-out notice does different work in the EU than in the US

The prohibition's phrasing, opting out of 'text or data mining', tracks the reservation-of-rights mechanism copyright holders invoke under the EU's text-and-data-mining exception, in the same period the International Confederation of Music Publishers stood up a portal for rightsholders to file that kind of opt-out at scale. [3]

The National Music Publishers' Association had already argued that opt-out regimes like this one are impractical to enforce, since no rightsholder can monitor thousands of AI companies individually to check whether an opt-out was honored. [1]

Atlas interpretation: In the EU, filing the opt-out has a defined legal effect: it removes the training use from an exception that would otherwise permit it. US copyright law has no equivalent statutory carve-out to opt out of, so the same letter functions there as a public position and a demand for information rather than an independent bar on training. Its leverage in the US comes from what it might be a prelude to, not from the letter by itself. [3][1]

Sony sent the toughest letter of any major label, while Universal and Warner licensed voices to Google

Sony did not take part in YouTube's Dream Track experiment, which let users generate short songs in the AI-modeled voice and style of participating artists under license, unlike Universal Music Group and Warner Music Group, which both had artists take part. [2]

Atlas interpretation: The three largest labels reached for different tools in the same period: two licensed a generative product built on their artists' voices, and the third sent a mass legal notice attempting to close off training on its catalog entirely. Both bets assume the label, not the platform, should keep control of the terms; they just disagree about whether participating on negotiated terms or refusing outright is what actually preserves that control. [2]