Google Seeks Dismissal of Lyria 3 AI Lawsuit, Citing YouTube’s Terms of Service

Google moves to dismiss indie artists’ Lyria 3 AI training lawsuit, arguing they licensed their music when agreeing to YouTube’s terms of service

June 10, 2026 By Mandy Dalugdug

Google has moved to dismiss the copyright lawsuit brought against it by a group of independent musicians over its Lyria 3 AI music model.

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The company’s central argument is that the artists licensed their music to YouTube when they uploaded it – and that the license covers the conduct they are now suing over.

In a motion filed on Monday (June 8) in the US District Court for the Northern District of Illinois , Google urged the court to throw out the complaint “with prejudice.”

Google  set out its arguments in a memorandum of law,  which you can read here , accompanied by a declaration from its attorney  Andrew H. Schapiro ,  which you can read here .

Google’s lead argument rests on  YouTube ‘s Terms of Service, which the company says each musician accepted when they made their songs available on the platform.

Each plaintiff granted YouTube and its “Affiliates” a “worldwide, non-exclusive, royalty-free, sublicensable and transferable license” to “use [uploaded] content,” including to “reproduce, distribute, [and] prepare derivative works,” Google said.

Those “Affiliates” include the other companies within Alphabet, Google among them, according to the filing.

Google ‘s filing noted that YouTube paid more than $8 billion to the music industry in the twelve months to June 2025.

> “Plaintiffs are musicians who chose to leverage Google’s groundbreaking YouTube platform to promote and monetize their music. They ask the Court to impose sweeping liability on Google for building another transformative tool – Lyria.” Google’s motion

“Plaintiffs are musicians who chose to leverage Google’s groundbreaking YouTube platform to promote and monetize their music,” Google’s lawyers wrote.

“They ask the Court to impose sweeping liability on Google for building another transformative tool – Lyria , a music-generation platform that democratizes access to the recording studio for millions of others.”

“Their lawsuit is based on the unsupported hypothesis that Google trained on their specific works,” the filing added.

The musicians sued Google in March , accusing it of training Lyria 3 on copyrighted recordings pulled from YouTube without permission or payment.

The plaintiffs include New York singer-songwriter Sam Kogon , Los Angeles composer Magnus Fiennes , and Atlanta producer Michael Mell , alongside members of Chicago band Directrix .

Their 118-page complaint argued that Google holds “structural leverage” because it owns YouTube and runs Content ID , the platform’s rights-management system.

Lyria 3 launched on February 18 inside Google’s Gemini app, letting users generate 30-second tracks with vocals and lyrics from text prompts or images.

Google also argued that the plaintiffs lack standing to pursue their claims under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act .

> “despite alleging that Lyria was trained on their recordings, Plaintiffs identify no infringing output, no copyright management information that was altered or removed, and no concrete harm flowing from the purported violation.” Google’s motion, filed on June 8

“Plaintiffs’ DMCA claims collapse on standing grounds: despite alleging that Lyria was trained on their recordings, Plaintiffs identify no infringing output, no copyright management information (‘CMI’) that was altered or removed, and no concrete harm flowing from the purported violation,” the filing said.

On the musicians’ contributory infringement claim, Google argued it fails under the US Supreme Court ‘s March ruling in Cox Communications v. Sony Music Entertainment .

That decision, Google said, requires plaintiffs to show that a defendant induced the infringement at issue – something the company argued the musicians have not done.

The company also challenged the artists’ false endorsement claim under the Lanham Act .

The plaintiffs “do not – and cannot plausibly – allege that their voices are sufficiently distinctive or well-known to function as trademarks in the marketplace, or that any consumer has ever encountered a Lyria output and mistaken it for their work,” Google said.

Google further argued that the artists’ claim under Illinois’ Biometric Information Privacy Act , which alleges the company extracted “voiceprints” of their voices to build Lyria , rests on speculation.

The filing said the complaint undermines that theory by alleging that “artist-identifying metadata was stripped in the first step of Lyria’s training pipeline.”

Google added that Magenta RealTime , a publicly available open-source model that shares Lyria ‘s architecture, “contains no trace of voiceprints.”

The case against Google is one of several copyright battles over AI music training moving through the US courts.

In 2024, the RIAA sued AI music generators Suno and Udio on behalf of the major record companies for “mass infringement” of copyright.

Universal Music Group settled its case against Udio in October 2025, agreeing to build a licensed AI music platform, with Warner Music Group later reaching its own settlement .

All but one of the musicians suing Google previously sued Udio and Suno , and they noted that Google launched Lyria 3 after Udio settled with UMG and Warner Music.

“Speculation and ‘information and belief’ allegations untethered to observable facts cannot survive a motion to dismiss,” Google ‘s lawyers wrote.

The musicians brought their case as a proposed class action, naming Google as the sole defendant.

Google is represented in the matter by law firm Quinn Emanuel Urquhart & Sullivan . Music Business Worldwide

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_Originally reported by [Music Business Worldwide](https://www.musicbusinessworldwide.com/google-moves-to-dismiss-indie-artists-lawsuit-over-lyria-3-ai-training-arguing-they-licensed-their-music-to-youtube/)._