Leaked hacking data has revealed that Suno, an AI music generator facing lawsuits over copyright infringement, trained its models by scraping millions of songs from YouTube Music, Deezer, Genius, and other platforms—including 2,013,545 YouTube Music clips and hundreds of thousands of hours from various sources.
The disclosures directly support allegations by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) that Suno intentionally circumvented YouTube's protections to "stream rip" tracks, undermining the company's public defense that its training practices fall under fair use doctrine.
What happened
A hacking incident exposed that Suno, an AI music generator, scraped millions of songs and lyrics from online platforms including YouTube Music, Deezer, Genius, Pond5, Jamendo, Freesound, and the International Music Score Library Project (IMSLP) to train its models. Leaked data from 2023 and 2024 shows Suno had consumed 2,013,545 YouTube Music clips and sourced hundreds of thousands of hours of content from multiple platforms, including roughly one million hours of podcasts.
Why it matters
Suno is facing multiple lawsuits—including one from the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA)—alleging it used copyrighted materials without permission. The leaked data directly corroborates the RIAA's claim that Suno circumvented YouTube's copyright protections through "stream ripping." Suno has defended its practices as legal under fair use doctrine, but these disclosures show the scope of the scraping was far larger than previously known and confirm allegations it deliberately sourced a cappella tracks to extract vocal-only audio.
What to watch
The hacking incident, disclosed in November 2025, also exposed customer information including email addresses, phone numbers, and Stripe payment details, though Suno stated no sensitive payment data was compromised. The company did not notify affected customers, stating it determined individual notifications were not required under privacy law.
Ask the AI about this article →
Suno's position in ongoing litigation has been strengthened by the leaked data, which transforms the RIAA's allegations from speculation into documented evidence. The hacker's disclosure of source code and scraping instructions directly supports the RIAA's claim that Suno intentionally circumvented YouTube's copyright protections—a violation distinct from the fair use defense Suno has been mounting. Suno has consistently avoided public disclosure of its training data sources, stating only that it trained on "publicly available music files and related metadata accessible on third-party websites on the open Internet." The leaked files reveal not just what was scraped, but how: the deliberate search for a cappella versions to isolate vocals, the use of third-party scraping services like Bright Data, and the systematic scale (over 2 million YouTube Music clips alone) suggest an industrial-grade data collection operation that goes well beyond passive use of public content.
The security incident itself, discovered in November 2025, exposed customer payment and contact information alongside the training data—a compounding embarrassment for a company arguing it should be trusted with copyrighted content. Suno's assertion that "no sensitive personal information was compromised" contradicts the hacker's apparent access to email, phone numbers, and Stripe details, and the company's refusal to notify customers invokes a narrow reading of privacy law that may not hold up if regulators or affected users challenge it.
For example, today's edition would include:
AI-summarized, only the topics you pick — one digest a day via Email, Slack, or Discord.
Free · takes 30 seconds · unsubscribe anytimeWhat is AIToday? →
Ask AI anything about this article. Q&As are published on this page for other readers too.
Mitsubishi Electric and its U.S
EDM producer Max "H4RRIS" Harris and Italian turntablist-turned-producer Nihil Young are publicly calling out…
Beatport now bans tracks made entirely or mostly by AI
The Fire and Disaster Management Agency plans to launch a model project in fiscal 2027 to use AI in handling 1…
AWS announced an integration where Amazon Quick, an agentic AI workspace, connects to fal's generative media p…
Leafnet and BBIX began collaborating in August 2026 to build a new service that combines voice and AI
