Suno to Watermark AI-Generated Songs Amid Ongoing Copyright Legal Battles

AI music startup Suno says it will begin watermarking songs created on its platform, introduce stricter download policies, and tighten its community guidelines as it faces mounting legal pressure from record labels, artist organisations, and users.

The company announced the new measures in a blog post from co-founder and CEO Mikey Shulman, who said Suno wants to encourage original creativity while giving more people access to AI-powered music creation tools.

The changes come as the startup battles multiple copyright lawsuits and increasing scrutiny over how AI-generated music is created, distributed, and monetised.

Watermarking AI-generated music

One of Suno’s biggest challenges has been users uploading AI-generated songs to third-party streaming platforms in an attempt to generate royalty income. To address that issue, the company said it will begin using audio watermarking and fingerprinting technologies that can identify music produced on its platform.

Suno has not disclosed whether it will rely on an existing technology such as Google’s SynthID or develop its own watermarking solution.

The company also confirmed a partnership with lyrics provider Musixmatch, which will use its Sentinel copyright detection system to help identify protected content and improve copyright enforcement.

Shulman said the watermarking tools are designed to withstand tampering without affecting the listening experience and are intended to provide transparency rather than judge whether AI-generated music is artistic or meaningful.

“Ultimately, we believe it should be up to artists and platforms to decide what they want to disclose,” Shulman wrote. “Our role is to build tools that give them transparency options and make it easier to collaborate across the industry.”

New download restrictions and platform rules

Suno also plans to introduce a new download policy intended to prevent the large-scale distribution of AI-generated music across streaming services. However, the company declined to provide further details about how the restrictions will work.

In addition, it has updated its community guidelines to explicitly prohibit deceptive audio presented as authentic recordings and the unauthorised use of a real person’s voice or likeness in AI-generated songs. The updated rules are aimed at reducing impersonation and copycat content on the platform.

Growing legal pressure

The announcement follows a series of legal challenges facing the startup. Suno, which raised $400 million in a Series D funding round in June, remains involved in a copyright lawsuit brought by Universal Music Group and Sony Music Group in a case coordinated by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA).

Last month, a German court also ruled in favour of the licensing organisation GEMA, finding that Suno had violated copyright rules.

Separately, reports emerged that the company suffered a data breach in November 2025 that allegedly revealed Suno had scraped content from YouTube, Deezer, and Genius to train its AI models. Data breach notification service Have I Been Pwned later said the incident affected approximately 55 million users.

The company is now also facing a class action lawsuit in Massachusetts alleging that it prioritised growth and profits over implementing adequate security protections for user data.