- Some of Suno’s music-scraping tactics have been exposed
- Hacked code shows that tracks were ripped from YouTube Music and Deezer
- The AI music maker is facing several lawsuits from artists
It’s unlikely to come as a surprise to you that an AI company built training data on copyrighted works without permission or compensation, but a new hack from AI music maker Suno has apparently revealed just how rampant the data theft has been.
As reported by 404 Media, a hacker known as ellie.191 was able to access Suno source code and training libraries and find references to platforms such as YouTube, YouTube Music, Deezer, Genius and the International Music Score Library Project.
The newly revealed data dates from 2023 and 2024, and refers to 2,013,545 tracks ripped from YouTube Music, as well as 12,287 hours of music consumed from Deezer. We’re talking decades of tunes here.
Some of Suno’s alleged ripping tactics are also revealed by the code: its song grabber appears to look for acapella versions of tracks on YouTube for vocal training, while a large number of podcasts were also targeted by the software.
Litigation in the pipeline
Suno already faces several ongoing lawsuits over the practice of training its AI on copyrighted songs without permission, including one filed involving the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA).
The argument is not whether or not Suno ripped this music – it admits to using “essentially all reasonable quality music files available on the open internet” for AI training – but rather whether that counts as ‘fair use’.
It’s a story that also plays out across other creative fields, including writing, photography and filmmaking. AI models need human-generated content to function properly, but AI companies generally don’t seem keen to pay for it.
Most commenters reacting online express a lack of surprise that this is what Suno has been up to: one Redditor writes “this is literally what every LLM in existence has done,” while another calls the practice “withering theft.”
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