Italy’s competition authority, the AGCM, has opened an investigation into Suno, the US company whose AI service turns text prompts into songs. It says parts of Suno’s terms of service may be unfair to consumers.
The case, CV278, was announced on 6 October. It comes just over two months after a court in Munich ruled that Suno had infringed copyright in songs including Alphaville’s “Forever Young” and “Big in Japan”.
What Italy objects to
The AGCM is acting under Article 33 of Italy’s Consumer Code, which covers contract terms that create “a significant imbalance” between a company and its customers.
According to the authority’s press release, Suno’s terms appear to let it change the contract, the service and subscription prices on its own, “without having to provide any justification.”
They also appear to let Suno suspend or close accounts, and any songs stored in them, “at any time, for any reason and without prior notice.”
Users are asked to accept further terms they cannot see before signing up, and Suno limits its liability in “very broad and generic terms”, including for personal injury.
The authority said the copyright clauses “deserve particular attention”. It called the licence users must grant Suno “generic and all-encompassing” and said the terms make users waive their moral rights, against Articles 20 and following of Italy’s copyright law of 1941.
Moral rights let an author be credited for a work and object to it being distorted. Suno’s terms give the company a “perpetual, irrevocable right and license” to use whatever users submit.
Disputes must go to binding individual arbitration in the US, with tight deadlines and no class actions, and the courts of Massachusetts, where Suno is based, have exclusive jurisdiction. Over the next few weeks the AGCM will open a public consultation on the terms. Trade associations, chambers of commerce and recognised consumer groups can take part.
It is not the authority’s first AI case. Earlier this year it closed probes into DeepSeek, Mistral and Nova AI after the three agreed to warn users that their chatbots can make things up.
A German ruling over Alphaville and Boney M
GEMA, the German collecting society, sued Suno on 21 January 2025 saying the company had not responded to repeated requests to license its songs. On 31 July 2026 the Munich Regional Court ruled for GEMA. It was the first time a European court had ruled on AI training carried out in the United States.
According to a summary by the law firm Bird & Bird, much of the technical background was not disputed: Suno trained its models in the US on millions of complete recordings, obtained from YouTube by stream-ripping.
The works in the case, reported by Music Week, included both of those Alphaville songs, Lou Bega’s “Mambo No. 5” and Boney M’s “Daddy Cool” and “Rasputin”. Suno must pay damages that have yet to be set.
“We disagree with today’s ruling,” a Suno spokesperson said, adding that the company was “evaluating all available options, including an appeal.”
Two lawsuits and three licensing deals
In the United States, Universal and Sony sued Suno a second time on 18 September, over 60,202 recordings. Their first case, filed in June 2024, is still running. Warner Music, a former plaintiff, signed a licensing deal with Suno in November 2025.
BMG followed on 12 August 2026 and the distributor Believe on 8 September. The labels say the three deals “confirm that a functioning market exists” for licensing recordings to train AI.
For more on AI and music money, read how DistroKid began pulling songs over a Universal lawsuit, how one man got 18 months for AI streaming fraud, and how Kraftwerk fought 27 years over a two-second sample.
“Forever Young” came out in September 1984. By May 2026 it had passed 1.2 billion streams on Spotify.
Lead photo: Nina zeynep güler / Pexels, Pexels License