AI & Models
Hack suggests AI music generator Suno scraped YouTube for training data
A hacker who breached Suno's systems says internal source code shows the AI music generator scraped decades of audio from YouTube Music, Deezer, Genius, and other platforms to train its models, according to a report from 404 Media.
AI music generator Suno was hacked, 404 Media reported. The hacker told the publication that they used a supply chain attack in November to access an employee’s credentials, which then let them view source code allegedly showing how Suno scraped decades of audio from YouTube Music, Deezer, Genius, stock music libraries, and podcast RSS feeds.
Suno has previously admitted that it trains its AI on “publicly available music files” found on the open internet, arguing it can train on copyrighted material under the fair use doctrine — a subjective carve-out of copyright law. But according to the major record labels actively suing Suno, deliberately circumventing YouTube’s protections against data scraping is illegal under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) and also violates YouTube’s terms of service.
Udio, a Suno competitor, has also been accused of scraping YouTube data. Google, YouTube’s parent company, faces similar copyright-infringement allegations from a number of major book publishers.
The hacker reportedly also accessed customer data, including emails, phone numbers, and partial credit card numbers stored in Stripe. Suno did not notify customers about the November 2025 breach and claims the incident was a “limited security incident that was quickly contained.”
Why it matters
The leaked source code adds technical detail to the copyright fight already facing AI music generators, at a moment when major labels are suing Suno directly over how its models were trained.