Suno adds song watermarks as it fights copyright lawsuits

Suno, the AI platform that lets users generate songs, said Thursday it will roll out new tools to mark tracks made on its platform, limit downloads, and tighten community guidelines to curb copycat songs. The changes arrive as Suno faces numerous lawsuits from record labels and artist organizations.

In a blog post, co-founder and CEO Mikey Shulman laid out core principles for the platform, saying Suno wants to promote original creation while still letting more people make music with its AI tools. One flashpoint has been users uploading AI-generated songs to other streaming platforms and gaming those services’ payout systems. Suno said it will now use audio watermarking and fingerprinting to curb that kind of misuse elsewhere; it did not say, when asked by TechCrunch, whether it would build its own system or adopt an existing one such as Google’s SynthID.

The company also signed an agreement with lyrics provider Musixmatch to use its Sentinel system for copyright detection, according to the blog post.

“These tools are designed to be durable and resistant to tampering, without affecting the listening experience. They are also not intended to pass judgment on whether a song is good, meaningful, or sufficiently human,” Shulman wrote. “Ultimately, we believe it should be up to artists and platforms to decide what they want to disclose. Our role is to build tools that give them transparency options and make it easier to collaborate across the industry.”

Suno also plans to add a new download policy meant to bar mass distribution on streaming platforms, though it declined to give details, and has updated its community guidelines to explicitly prohibit “deceptive audio presented as real” and using a real person’s voice or likeness without permission.

The company, which raised $400 million in a Series D round in June, is fighting legal battles on multiple fronts. It is being sued by Universal Music Group and Sony Music Group in a case coordinated by the Recording Industry Association of America, and a German court recently ruled in favor of licensing agency GEMA, finding that Suno was breaking copyright rules. Separately, 404 Media reported that Suno suffered a data breach in November 2025 that revealed the platform had scraped YouTube, Deezer, and Genius to train its models; Have I Been Pwned said the breach affected 55 million users. Suno now also faces a class-action lawsuit in Massachusetts alleging the company overlooked security measures to focus on profit.

Why it matters

Suno’s watermarking push shows how AI content platforms are being forced to build in provenance and anti-abuse tooling under legal pressure, rather than treating it as optional — a pattern likely to spread to other generative-media companies.