Breach of AI music startup Suno exposes scraping of millions of songs from YouTube and Deezer

A hacker broke into the systems of AI music generator Suno, stealing source code and customer data, and shared the findings with 404 Media. The breach revealed that Suno scraped millions of songs and lyrics from platforms including YouTube Music, Deezer, Genius, and stock music libraries to train its AI tool. According to TechCrunch, the hacker used an employee's credentials to access the source code.

"vomits out soulless audio in the form of AI-generated 'music'"

EngadgetA hacker accessed Suno source code that reportedly details how the company scraped millions of songs

Engadget's blunt description of Suno's output captures the controversy surrounding the company, which has faced lawsuits from major record labels over copyright infringement. The scraped data also included content from the International Music Score Library Project and podcasts harvested via RSS feeds, 404 Media reported.

The hacker also exposed user information for hundreds of thousands of Suno customers, along with Stripe payment data, according to 404 Media. The source code leak offers rare insight into the training data practices of AI music generation companies, which have typically kept such details opaque.

Suno recently raised more than $400 million at a $5.4 billion valuation, Runtimewire noted. The lawsuit from record labels and this breach both underscore the legal and ethical challenges facing AI music startups that rely on vast amounts of copyrighted material without permission.