As reported by Billboard, a new front has opened in the music industry’s ongoing negotiation over AI: record labels and distributors are increasingly inserting AI training rights directly into recording contracts, and artist attorneys say the language is showing up in deals where artists have little leverage and limited awareness of what they are agreeing to.
The investigation centers on a specific provision reviewed by entertainment attorney Steve Hession, who encountered language in a Sony Music contract granting the label “unlimited, exclusive rights” to “use the recording in models and systems of generative artificial intelligence and applications based thereon, including generative AI, including analysis of the Recording for the purpose of extracting information on patterns, trends and correlations (AI training).” Hession pushed back and ultimately secured a compromise giving his client some approval rights for individual AI training uses. Critically, however, those approval rights do not extend to any “blanket license” Sony may sign to grant a third party access to “all or a significant portion” of its catalog, a carve-out that attorney advocates say is the real exposure point.
That deal was not an outlier. B1 Recordings used near-identical language in a different artist single agreement in November 2025. Believe included a provision in an October 2025 distribution contract allowing it to license content in datasets to “research, train, develop and test gen AI models and/or products.” A BMG distribution deal obtained from a European music executive and translated from German contains an explicit “AI Right” granting the ability to use songs “in whole or in part in connection with artificial intelligence systems, in particular to feed the contractual products into an AI system as training, validation or test datasets” and to “exploit the output generated by the AI system.” That same BMG contract also prohibits artists from submitting AI-generated tracks as deliverables, bars re-recordings including AI voice simulations, and grants BMG the right of adaptation using AI tools.
Artist attorney Colin Morrissey of Granderson Des Rochers told Billboard that AI training clauses are “starting to creep their way into some new recording agreements” from smaller distributors and technologically-driven music companies, though it remains “pretty rare” to see explicit AI training rights in major-label deals. Attorney Avi Dahan describes the current landscape as the “Wild West,” a transition period where disclosure of AI use in a recording is becoming common but only some labels are asserting training rights directly.
The reason explicit language has appeared predominantly in German and French contracts has a structural explanation. According to Estelle Derclay, a professor of intellectual property law at the University of Nottingham, European contract law requires parties to spell out exactly all of the rights being granted rather than relying on broad general clauses. US and UK law allows for broader provisions, and that distinction is where the real risk for artists lies. Multiple top artist attorneys told Billboard they have recently begun to realize that “blanket license” clauses already present in many US recording contracts could feasibly allow labels to opt artists’ works into AI training with their existing AI partners without seeking individual artist approval. “As of now, the grant of rights in deals are broad enough to allow them to do it,” Morrissey told the publication.
This legal exposure is directly connected to the licensing deals the majors have been signing with AI platforms. UMG settled with Udio in October 2025 and entered a licensing deal with promises of new revenue streams for artists and songwriters. Warner followed with both Udio and Suno settlements in November and December. Sony remains in active litigation against both platforms. Each of those announcements emphasized “opt-in” as a central principle, with WMG CEO Robert Kyncl listing it as a non-negotiable, and UMG Chief Digital Officer Michael Nash citing it on podcasts and at conferences. But attorney Audrey Benoualid of Myman Greenspan Fox points to a gap in how that principle is being applied: “We’re seeing a differentiation between the way training, or inputs, and outputs are treated.” The opt-in commitments made publicly by label executives appear to reference outputs, meaning AI-generated music using an artist’s style or voice, not necessarily the underlying training process that ingests their recordings.
Morrissey says his current approach is to assume the label will have broad training rights and negotiate backward from there, pushing for as much individual approval as possible. Benoualid reports similar success in some cases. Jason Boyarski of Boyarski Fritz is cautiously optimistic that labels will seek genuine artist buy-in regardless of what existing contract language technically permits: “I think the labels genuinely want buy-in from the artist community in a way that makes it work. I think that there’s going to be a partnership between artists and labels to find the right solution.” Whether that optimism is warranted will depend significantly on what happens when the first major AI training licensing deal runs into a contract whose artist never explicitly consented.
