Google says your YouTube upload already licensed Lyria 3. Indie artists are testing that in court

If you have ever uploaded a song to YouTube, Google's lawyers think you may already have agreed to let it train a music generator on that song. That is the core of the motion to dismiss Google filed on 8 June 2026 in Kogon v. Google, a proposed class action brought by independent musicians in the Northern District of Illinois.

What is the case about?

The complaint, filed on 6 March 2026, has eleven named plaintiffs, one of them a company. They include New York singer-songwriter Sam Kogon, composer Magnus Fiennes and producer Michael Mell, according to the docket and Music Business Worldwide. They allege that Google trained Lyria 3 on their recordings without permission or payment. Google launched Lyria 3 in the Gemini app on 18 February 2026, where it makes 30-second tracks with vocals and lyrics, and also offers it to creators through YouTube's Dream Track.

The complaint adds DMCA, false-endorsement and Illinois biometric-privacy (BIPA) claims to the copyright ones. Its sharpest point is about structure. Google runs YouTube, and it also runs Content ID, the fingerprint system that rights holders feed with full-length reference recordings and ownership metadata so their music can be protected. The plaintiffs allege, on "information and belief", that Google used that same infrastructure as a training source. The Music Artists Coalition summed up the irony on X: the company accused of training on the songs runs the system artists use to protect them.

That allegation is unproven. The complaint itself pleads it on information and belief.

What does Google argue?

Google's main argument is contractual. In its reading, every plaintiff accepted YouTube's terms, which grant YouTube and its "Affiliates" a worldwide, royalty-free, sublicensable licence to use uploaded content. The current YouTube terms define Affiliates as the other companies in the Alphabet group, which includes Google. Google says that licence "authorized the conduct alleged in the Complaint".

Google doesn't say what Lyria 3 was trained on. The motion calls the lawsuit "based on the unsupported hypothesis that Google trained on their specific works". Its July reply goes further, saying Google disputes the training allegations while arguing the licence would cover them anyway. When The Verge asked Google directly whether it uses YouTube videos to train Lyria 3, the company declined to comment. Google's own launch post says only that it was "very mindful of copyright and partner agreements" in training Lyria 3.

The motion also attacks each claim on its own terms. Google argues that the plaintiffs point to no infringing output, no confused listener and no concrete harm. It argues that the contributory-infringement claim fails under the Supreme Court's March 2026 Cox v. Sony ruling. And it argues that two sets of plaintiffs sued over works that weren't yet registered with the Copyright Office.

What do the artists say back?

In their opposition, filed 30 June, the artists lean on four words in the licence: "in connection with the Service". The Service is YouTube's video platform, they argue. Lyria 3 and Google's separate music app, ProducerAI, don't host, play or redistribute it. They are generators competing in the markets where these musicians license their work. The artists also point to ProducerAI's own terms, which spell out a right to use content for "AI and machine-learning technologies". When Google wanted a training licence, they say, it wrote one, and the YouTube terms contain nothing like it.

They raise practical gaps too. Google hasn't tied any terms version to any plaintiff or upload, the complaint doesn't say each plaintiff uploaded each song personally (one band distributes through an aggregator), and a YouTube licence can't cover copies taken from Spotify, Apple Music or other services. They also concede one point: they don't oppose dismissing, without prejudice, the copyright claims for works that weren't registered when they sued.

The docket shows a plaintiffs' sur-reply on 27 July as the last filing. The judge, Sunil R. Harjani, has said he will issue a written ruling. On 1 June he also paused discovery until the motion is decided.

Why every artist with a channel has a stake

The reaction among artists is louder than it is detailed. On r/ArtistHate, a thread whose title begins "What court case is this because it will decide a…" suggests artists are watching. We couldn't open it, so we can't confirm which case it means or what the replies say. Whatever the thread meant, the stakes are real. If Google's reading wins, the question for working musicians is no longer whether a model trained on their music. It becomes which platform's terms they accepted, and which company group owns that platform.

What we think

The licence argument is the headline, but the paused discovery is the trap. Google's position comes down to "you can't show we trained on your songs, and if we did, you agreed to it." The only records that could show what Lyria 3 trained on belong to Google, and discovery is frozen until the judge rules. The artists have to plead specifics they can't see, against a company that won't say. If the case is dismissed at this stage, nobody outside Google will ever find out what the model learned from.

There's also a telling contrast in YouTube's own help pages. YouTube offers a third-party training setting that is off by default. The page introducing it says this is about making sure creators "continue to control how their content is used", and it lets them choose which outside AI companies, if any, may train on their videos. The page doesn't describe any equivalent control over Google's own use. So YouTube treats outside AI training as something a creator has to opt in to. In court, Google argues that its own training needed no separate yes at all. Both positions can't reflect what creators understood they were agreeing to.

Our view: if clicking "upload" counts as consent to train a competing product, then every platform's terms of service quietly become a training licence. Courts may or may not accept that. Platforms shouldn't wait to find out. AI-training consent should be a separate, explicit choice that applies to the platform's own parent company as well as to outsiders. Until that happens, two practical steps: register the works you care about with the Copyright Office before anything goes wrong, since registration is what some plaintiffs here lacked, and read your distributor's and every platform's licence clause for the word "affiliates".