Suno CEO insists Suno is “responsible” and isn’t going to leave people behind: “Music is one of the oldest forms of human expression, and it has always evolved alongside technology”

Suno Co-Founder and CEO Mikey Shulman insists that the company’s AI is the “future of music” and is being built “responsibly” in a new blog post.

With The Atlantic’s AI Watchdog recently exposing datasets of upwards of 12 million copyrighted songs being used to train AI, plenty of artists have spoken out against AI interfering with human creativity. SZA in particular has called AI a “vulture” training on music without permission. But Suno’s CEO asserts that Suno will preserve the irreplaceable “human experiences, emotions, and imperfections that make music meaningful“.

Of course, AI needs human creation to learn from. Though Shulman doesn’t directly address Suno’s alleged use of copyrighted tracks in training, he insisted that Suno tries to “reduce the risk” of reproducing copyrighted content. “We use training strategies we call Original Creation, By Design to reduce the risk of unauthorised reproductions,” he writes.

“For example, we intentionally chose not to use artist names in our training metadata because our goal is to help people create original songs – not music that sounds like existing artists,” he continues. “AI should help people create something new, not imitate someone else’s work. This philosophy has guided how we’ve built our models and platform from the start.”

He rounds the point off by clarifying that “unlike many AI music platforms, we’ve never allowed prompts for specific artists or copyrighted songs”.

Elsewhere in the post, the CEO also clarifies that Suno aims to “contributing to a healthy and growing music ecosystem”. And, in his words, that future will not push human creativity to the side. “Music is one of the oldest and most universal forms of human expression, and it has always evolved alongside technology,” Shulman says.

He goes on to point out that technology has improved the ability to “find and listen to music” – the next stage of development (ie, AI) is just making it even easier to interact with and create music. “We believe this next wave will make it possible for far more people to experience the joys of creating it,” he says.

However, that isn’t handing over all the reigns to a machine. A core Suno principle is “great music is made by people”, with technology “[unlocking] new ways to create, but it can’t replace the human experiences, emotions, and imperfections that make music meaningful”.

Moving forward, the platform will begin enforcing download limits to encourage more “intentional” creation. “We will soon introduce a new downloads policy designed to limit the ability to mass distribute songs on streaming platforms, while preserving the professional, creative, and personal ways people use Suno,” he explains. “These changes won’t affect the vast majority of our users, but they will make large-scale abuse much harder.”

New “transparency tools” will also help users identify AI-generated tracks across platforms. “In the coming weeks, we will also be adopting new audio watermarking and fingerprinting technology so we can partner even more closely with distribution platforms on combatting fraud and misuse,” he explains.

“We believe this moment has the potential to bring more people into making music, create new opportunities for artists, and strengthen the music ecosystem,” he concludes. “Staying grounded in our principles, and continuing to listen, learn, and adapt, is how we’ll navigate that change as we help build toward that future.”

To read the full blog post, head to Suno.