From Music Business Worldwide · · 1m 40s
Alphabet shareholder sues Google execs over AI training on copyrighted works
Shareholder Phil Rosen files lawsuit against Alphabet leaders for using copyrighted music and voice recordings to train AI models like Lyria.
In brief
Shareholder Phil Rosen files lawsuit against Alphabet leaders for using copyrighted music and voice recordings to train AI models like Lyria. Shareholder Phil Rosen sued Alphabet executives for training Google's AI on copyrighted works without permission, seeking damages and governance changes. Originally reported by…
Shareholder sues Alphabet execs
Shareholder Phil Rosen filed a 79-page lawsuit against 13 Alphabet executives including Sundar Pichai and Larry Page over AI training on copyrighted works.
“The strategy was carefully crafted to avoid spending the time and money necessary to obtain lawful licenses or permission from the copyright holders”
Alphabet's unlawful AI strategy
The lawsuit claims Alphabet used copyrighted music, recordings, and voiceprints to train AI models without permission or compensation.
“Defendants followed the 'ask forgiveness not approval' model and adopted an unlawful plan to use a pirated dataset”
Lyria and MusicLM training data
Google trained Lyria, MusicLM, and other models on 280,000 hours of copyrighted music without identifying rights holders or licenses.
“Google did not identify the specific recordings, rights holders, or licenses in this 280,000-hour training corpus”
BIPA violations
Alphabet allegedly violated Illinois' Biometric Information Privacy Act by collecting voiceprints without written consent.
“Google also stripped out all copyright information that identified the artists and their copyright notices”
Proxy statement deception
Alphabet dropped 'Responsible AI' statements from 2025 and 2026 proxies after claiming compliance with copyright and BIPA laws.
“The Director Defendants eliminated these statements because they were well aware that they should not have been placed in the 2024 Proxy Statement”
Share repurchases
Alphabet bought back 1.147 billion shares between April 2023 and November 2025 for USD $169.6 billion.
“All of these repurchases were made at times when the Defendants knew, but had failed to disclose, the Company’s copyright and BIPA infringement”
Legal consequences
If Rosen wins, Alphabet could face damages and forced governance changes for AI copyright and BIPA violations.
“The strategy was carefully crafted to avoid spending the time and money necessary to obtain lawful licenses or permission from the copyright holders”
Related lawsuits
Alphabet faces lawsuits from major labels over AI training on copyrighted recordings and voiceprints.
“The cases it cites include the major labels’ lawsuits against Suno and Udio”
Fair use defense
Google argues AI training on public data qualifies as fair use under US law, similar to art students taking inspiration from galleries.
“Using publicly available web data for training models is a transformative, non-expressive use, like an art student taking inspiration from walking through a gallery”
Similar shareholder suit
A shareholder filed a similar derivative suit against Apple executives in August 2024 over AI training practices.
“In August, a shareholder of the same name filed a similar derivative suit against Apple’s executives and board members”
What it means
Shareholder Phil Rosen sued Alphabet executives for training Google's AI on copyrighted works without permission, seeking damages and governance changes.
