AI music generator Suno tightens rules to fight spam and address growing copyright concerns

AI music generator Suno tightens rules to fight spam and address growing copyright concerns

AI music generator Suno faces growing pressure over claims that it trained on copyrighted material without permission. Songs made with Suno also compete directly with music from human artists, giving the company another reason to act.

AGerman court recently ruledthat Suno used copyrighted songs during training and can reproduce them when prompted the right way. The court also found that the US fair use doctrine doesn't apply to Suno's case. Before that ruling,one of Suno's own investorsadmitted that songs generated with Suno compete directly with music made by human artists. That matters in fair use cases, which consider whether copyrighted data has been used for a new and transformative purpose.

Suno says its training approach favors original music

Suno co-founder and CEO Mikey Shulman laid out four guiding principles and a set of new measures in ablog post. The company says it follows a training strategy called "Original Creation, By Design" that's meant to reduce the risk of unauthorized reproductions. Specifically, Suno says it deliberately left artist names out of its training metadata. Ad

The company also says it has never allowed prompts targeting specific artists or copyrighted songs. On top of that, Suno works with Audible Magic,Musixmatch, and other third-party services to check uploaded audio files and lyrics for potential unauthorized use. Ad DEC_D_Incontent-1

New download rules target mass distribution

Suno acknowledges that its technology shouldn't be abused to export content at scale. Most music created on the platform is personal, the company says. Still, it's rolling out a new download policy designed to limit the ability topush songs onto streaming platforms in bulk.

Most users won't be affected, according to Suno, but large-scale abuse will become much harder. The company says it first announced such a step last year.In March, a man was convictedafter uploading hundreds of thousands of songs made with AI and fraudulently collecting $8 million in royalties. Ad

The company also plans to add transparency tools based on standards now taking shape across the music industry. These tools will let other platforms identify songs created with Suno as AI-generated.

Alongside these changes, Suno says it has made itscommunity guidelinesmore explicit. The company says it has always banned attempts to replicate existing songs, uploading material without proper rights, and using someone's voice or likeness without permission. Its rules also prohibit spam, fake engagement, bots, and deceptive audio presented as authentic. Ad DEC_D_Incontent-2

AI News Without the Hype – Curated by Humans

Subscribe to THE DECODER for ad-free reading, a weekly AI newsletter, our exclusive "AI Radar" frontier report six times a year, full archive access, and access to our comment section.