Suno hopes to go legit with watermarks for AI-generated music
Suno hopes to go legit with watermarks for AI-generated music
Suno 希望通过为 AI 生成的音乐添加水印来实现“正规化”
The Internet is awash in AI content, and it’s not always easy to tell it apart from genuine human creations. While images and videos are perhaps the most obvious type of AI slop, streaming music services like Spotify are also being inundated with AI-generated tunes. Suno is one of the most prolific sources of this AI music, but the company now says it’s looking to clean up its act with watermarks and policy changes.
互联网上充斥着 AI 内容，且往往难以将其与人类的原创作品区分开来。虽然图像和视频可能是最显眼的 AI “垃圾内容”，但 Spotify 等流媒体音乐服务也正被 AI 生成的曲目所淹没。Suno 是这些 AI 音乐最主要的来源之一，但该公司现在表示，正寻求通过添加水印和调整政策来改善其形象。
In a blog post announcing the plans, Suno CEO and co-founder Mikey Shulman says this is a necessary change to meet “emerging industry standards” for the labeling of AI content. Soon, the company will add watermarks to all audio outputs from its models, giving platforms the option to mark content as AI or block it entirely. Shulman doesn’t say if Suno will rely on an in-house solution or a ready-made solution like Google’s SynthID. Google recently began licensing SynthID to other companies. Google says the tech has been used to label 60,000 years’ worth of audio generated by its Gemini models, plus more than 100 billion images and videos.
在宣布该计划的博客文章中，Suno 首席执行官兼联合创始人 Mikey Shulman 表示，这是为了符合 AI 内容标注“新兴行业标准”所必需的变革。不久之后，该公司将为其模型输出的所有音频添加水印，使平台能够选择将内容标记为 AI 生成或直接将其屏蔽。Shulman 并未透露 Suno 是会采用内部解决方案，还是使用像 Google SynthID 这样的现成方案。Google 最近开始向其他公司授权 SynthID。据 Google 称，该技术已被用于标记其 Gemini 模型生成的相当于 6 万年时长的音频，以及超过 1000 亿张图像和视频。
Whatever technology Suno uses, the idea is that every track it generates will have an invisible code embedded in the waveform. A detector trained on that signature will be able to identify it, allowing Suno’s partners to combat “fraud and misuse.” Shulman notes the watermarking tech Suno intends to use is “durable and resistant to tampering” without affecting quality. However, no system is perfect. If someone does manage to break Suno’s watermarks, all the tracks produced to that point could be stripped of their AI labels. And this doesn’t solve the problem of proliferating AI music. There are other platforms that don’t have plans for watermarking, and open models could allow people to generate unlabeled AI music on their own hardware. That’s a problem with all efforts to watermark AI content.
无论 Suno 使用何种技术，其核心理念是让生成的每一首曲目都在波形中嵌入一段隐形代码。经过该特征训练的检测器将能够识别出这些代码，从而使 Suno 的合作伙伴能够打击“欺诈和滥用”行为。Shulman 指出，Suno 打算使用的水印技术“持久且防篡改”，同时不会影响音质。然而，没有完美的系统。如果有人成功破解了 Suno 的水印，那么在此之前生成的所有曲目都可能被剥离 AI 标签。此外，这并不能解决 AI 音乐泛滥的问题。还有其他平台没有水印计划，而开源模型也允许人们在自己的硬件上生成无标签的 AI 音乐。这也是所有 AI 内容水印工作所面临的共同难题。
Going legit
走向正规化
While much of the visual media generated by AI has flown under the legal radar, the music industry is famously litigious. Suno is being sued by Universal and Sony for copyright infringement in the US, and a German court recently found the company was violating the country’s music licensing laws. Both cases could lead to hefty fines. Suno is also in hot water after a hack in late 2025 that showed it scraped content from YouTube, Deezer, and others to train its models. Suno did not disclose the hack, which may have included the private information of millions of users. It’s being sued in Massachusetts over that.
虽然大部分 AI 生成的视觉媒体尚未引起法律层面的广泛关注，但音乐行业以好诉讼著称。Suno 目前在美国正面临环球音乐（Universal）和索尼（Sony）的版权侵权诉讼，德国一家法院最近也裁定该公司违反了该国的音乐许可法律。这两起案件都可能导致巨额罚款。此外，Suno 在 2025 年底遭遇黑客攻击后也陷入了困境，黑客行为显示该公司曾抓取 YouTube、Deezer 等平台的内容来训练其模型。Suno 并未披露此次黑客攻击，而此次泄露可能涉及数百万用户的个人信息，该公司因此在马萨诸塞州面临诉讼。
None of that is a good look, so it’s no surprise Suno is looking for ways to change the conversation. The company is essentially positioning itself as a tool for musicians and personal projects, not as a way to generate unlimited slop for Spotify. Shulman stresses in the blog that Suno supports the artistic process, noting that AI technology “can’t replace the human experiences, emotions, and imperfections that make music meaningful.” That, he claims, is why Suno already has rules designed to guard against misuse. For example, Suno doesn’t allow users to include specific artists or songs in their prompts, and it partners with companies like Musixmatch to ensure people don’t upload copyrighted content to use as a base for their generative compositions. Suno has also strengthened prohibitions against this kind of misuse in an update to its usage policy.
这些负面新闻显然对公司形象不利，因此 Suno 寻求改变舆论导向也就不足为奇了。该公司本质上正将自己定位为音乐人和个人项目的创作工具，而非为 Spotify 生成无限量垃圾内容的机器。Shulman 在博客中强调，Suno 支持艺术创作过程，并指出 AI 技术“无法取代使音乐变得有意义的人类体验、情感和不完美之处”。他声称，这就是为什么 Suno 已经制定了旨在防止滥用的规则。例如，Suno 不允许用户在提示词中包含特定艺术家或歌曲名称，并与 Musixmatch 等公司合作，以确保用户不会上传受版权保护的内容作为生成式创作的基础。Suno 还在其使用政策的更新中加强了对此类滥用行为的禁令。
More changes are coming, too. Last year, Suno agreed to limit downloads in a settlement with Warner Music Group. Suno is still working out the specifics, but Shulman says most users won’t be affected. However, limits on downloads, along with watermarking tracks, will apparently help to limit “large-scale abuse.” Whether these changes will save Suno from its legal woes remains to be seen.
更多的变革还在路上。去年，Suno 在与华纳音乐集团（Warner Music Group）的和解协议中同意限制下载量。Suno 仍在制定具体细节，但 Shulman 表示大多数用户不会受到影响。然而，限制下载量加上为曲目添加水印，显然有助于遏制“大规模滥用”。这些举措能否让 Suno 免于法律困境，仍有待观察。