Suno, one of the biggest generators of AI music, has announced plans to add watermarks to all audio its models produce, alongside tighter usage policies, in an effort to align with "emerging industry standards" and clean up its reputation. The move comes as AI-generated tracks flood streaming services such as Spotify, making it increasingly hard to distinguish human-made music from AI output, and follows mounting legal pressure on Suno over copyright and data practices.

CEO Mikey Shulman says the watermarking technology will be "durable and resistant to tampering" and will embed an invisible code in each track's waveform, letting platforms detect, label or block AI content, though it's unclear whether Suno will build its own system or license one such as Google's SynthID. The company faces copyright lawsuits from Universal and Sony in the US, a Massachusetts suit over an undisclosed 2025 hack that reportedly scraped content from YouTube and Deezer, and a German court ruling that it breached music licensing law. Suno has also strengthened its usage policy against prompting for specific artists or songs, partnered with Musixmatch to prevent copyrighted uploads, and agreed to limit downloads under a prior settlement with Warner Music Group, though Shulman says most users won't be affected.