Suno confirms V6 AI trained on user

Suno has confirmed its V6 AI music model was trained in part on 'creations' made by its own users. The company made the statement on Friday, September 18, in response to a new copyright lawsuit filed by Universal Music Group and Sony Music Entertainment in Boston federal court.

In its statement, Suno said V6 was trained on 'content licensed from our partners, interactions including creations and preference signals from our community, and the accumulated learnings from our team.' This marks the first time the company has publicly listed user 'creations' as a component of V6's training data, alongside licensed music and preference signals.

The Labels' New Allegations

The new complaint accuses Suno of copying 60,202 of the labels' sound recordings without a license. The lawsuit extends these claims to the V6 model, arguing it was built on synthetic audio outputs from earlier models that were themselves trained on unlicensed recordings. 'Training a 'new' model on the outputs of an infringing model does not eliminate the infringement; it launders it,' the complaint states. It alleges V6 is 'the fruit of the same poisoned tree.'

US copyright law sets statutory damages for willful infringement at up to $150,000 per work. Applied to the 60,202 recordings cited, this creates a theoretical maximum liability of just over $9 billion. The labels are also seeking up to $2,500 per act for allegedly circumventing YouTube's anti-downloading technology, which could add roughly $150 million. They have demanded a jury trial.

Suno's Defense and Partnerships

Suno called the lawsuit's claims 'fundamentally flawed on both the facts and the law.' The company highlighted its partnerships with major rightsholders, stating, 'Over the past two years, we have doubled down on this goal, launching v6 in partnership with WMG, BMG, and Believe.'

The labels' complaint turns these deals against Suno's fair use defense. 'Three agreements with three major rightsholders in less than a year confirm that a functioning market exists for licensing sound recordings to train generative AI models,' it argues. The complaint quotes Suno's Chief Product Officer Jack Brody saying the revenue share with partners is 'not in exchange for training,' calling that characterization 'self-serving.'

Ongoing Legal Context

Universal, Sony, and Warner Music Group first sued Suno in June 2024. Warner settled and struck a licensing deal in November 2025, leaving Universal and Sony as the remaining plaintiffs in that original case, which covers 560 recordings. The new lawsuit has been assigned to Judge F. Dennis Saylor IV, who is overseeing the first case.

In a separate legal filing from September 1, Suno argued its AI tool 'uses a back-end technological process, invisible to the public, in the service of creating an ultimately non-infringing new product.' The same document admits audio data was obtained from YouTube for training using YT-DLP. Suno also challenged the labels' standing on the stream-ripping claim and accused them of 'anticompetitive activities.'

Terms of Service and Broader Landscape

Suno's terms of service, in effect since at least January 2024, grant the company a 'perpetual, irrevocable' license over user content and AI-generated output for purposes including model 'improvement.' This language remains in the version updated on September 3.

The legal battle is part of a wider conflict. Sony has also sued Suno's rival Udio a second time. Udio has signed licensing deals with several major players, leaving Sony as the only major label without an agreement. Both the Suno and Udio complaints describe each company's 'belated embrace of licensing' as underscoring the alleged unlawfulness of their initial copying. Fact discovery in the original Suno case is scheduled to close on September 30.