Sony Seeks Removal of 260,000 AI Tracks
Sony Music has asked digital platforms to take down more than 260,000 tracks that imitate its artists’ voices and likenesses without permission, nearly twice the number of requests it had made six months earlier.
The tally, through the end of September, was reported by the Financial Times on 5 October and confirmed by Billboard. Sony had sought the removal of more than 135,000 tracks by the end of March 2026, and about 75,000 by March 2025. In the second and third quarters of this year it was filing more than 20,000 requests a month. The company has not said how many tracks were actually removed, how fast the platforms acted, or which services received the notices.
A spokesperson told Billboard the tracks “imitate our artists’ voices and likenesses without permission.” The volume was “almost double what we saw earlier this year,” happening “at scale,” and it “harms artists, misleads fans and undermines the ethical use of AI.” Every fraudulent stream, the company said, takes money from the artists and songwriters whose work is being listened to. Enforcement would continue, platforms were expected to act quickly and to stop the same files coming back, and the fight was “becoming an uphill struggle.”
The Financial Times and later reports named Harry Styles, Adele, Britney Spears, Queen and Michael Jackson among the voices and likenesses targeted. Earlier disclosures also mentioned Beyoncé. Dennis Kooker, Sony’s president of global digital business, has described the surge as demand-driven: the fakes tend to multiply when an artist is promoting new work, catching the attention the real release was meant to earn and diverting the streams.
The notices run through a voluntary system that the major labels and streaming services set up in 2023. The United States still has no federal law that bars the unauthorised use of a person’s name, image, likeness or voice in AI-generated material; what exists is a patchwork of state rules. The industry has backed the NO FAKES Act, which would create a federal right to authorise a digital replica of a voice or a visual likeness, with exceptions for news, parody, documentary and sport. A version cleared the Senate Judiciary Committee by unanimous voice vote in June. Billboard reported that the bill was then brought to the Senate floor and blocked by Senator Ted Cruz, who cited the use of a person’s image in satire and political commentary. The House companion had not left committee.
The wider flood is larger than the impersonations. Deezer has said more than 90,000 fully AI-generated tracks are uploaded to its service every day, though only a fraction impersonate a named artist. Industry estimates have put the annual cost of streaming fraud, including bot plays and synthetic tracks, in the billions. Sony is also a plaintiff in U.S. copyright cases against the AI music generators Suno and Udio.
