SZA slams ‘Suno’ and musicians using AI

SZA launched a fierce attack on AI music generators and the artists who support them, specifically calling out Suno and alleging that producer Diplo has equity in the company and is trying to train it to work for black musicians.

The Grammy-winning artist took to Instagram on Saturday to make her feelings known in no uncertain terms.

Writing on her private account, she argued that black artists are unfairly vulnerable to exploitation of their creative work.

“We represent 13% of the American population and yet we influence the world with our sound and perspective,” she wrote.

“I HAVE NOT HEARD A WHITE AI SONG YET… We have no legislative protection in medical or creative matters. Easiest to steal. DON’T GIVE AWAY YOUR VIBRANIUM!!! DON’T TRAIN THE AI WITH YOUR GENIUS.”

On her main Instagram account, she went further, saying that a search of her name revealed that AI models had been trained on 238 of her songs.

His message to any musician who supports this practice was clear.

“If you’re a musician and you support this degenerate shit? You’re disgusting and there’s NOTHING YOU CAN EVER SAY TO ME TO MAKE THIS OKAY. I hope you get the life you deserve.”

A Suno spokesperson declined to comment directly on SZA’s allegations, instead pointing to a LinkedIn post from the company’s product manager, Jack Brody, who said that Suno’s training metadata does not include artist names, cannot replicate the material it was trained on, and that the company is working to improve impersonation detection.

Suno’s Approach to Platform Integrity and Music Copyright Protection

Last week we announced that we are currently testing a new music model developed in partnership with the music industry. We’re extremely excited about this and it’s a good opportunity to share more about our vision for the integrity of the platform and protecting the people behind the music. At Suno, preserving human artistry and creativity is just as important as product innovation itself. We know it’s easy to be skeptical, especially if you haven’t really immersed yourself in our product. But most of the people who build Suno are musicians. Empowering human creativity is why we present ourselves, not just a corporate positioning. We believe that companies developing AI have a responsibility to invest in safeguards with the same level of ambition and rigor that they bring to creating products. From our beginnings, we have worked to integrate protections directly into the foundations of our platform. This includes clear rules prohibiting users from uploading or distributing content they do not own or have the right to use, meaningful enforcement when these rules are violated, and partnerships with industry-standard providers like Audible Magic, Musixmatch, and ACRCloud to help us identify and prevent abuse. This also shaped how we approached the development of the model itself. One of the most frequently asked questions about AI is whether models can reproduce the hardware of their training data. Our answer is simple: no, this should not happen. Our philosophy has always been that AI should help people create new music, not replicate someone else’s music. That’s why we’ve built our models around what we call “Original Creation, by Design”, training strategies intended to reduce the risk of generating unauthorized reproductions. For example, we don’t use artist names as a training metadata category, which means we made an intentional choice not to teach models artist names, because our goal is to help people create brand new songs, not music that sounds like existing artists. Alongside these efforts, we are actively developing additional approaches for audio fingerprinting, watermarking, and spam and spoofing detection. We do not treat these matters as a compliance exercise. It’s a core part of how we build and has led us to have more copyright safeguards in place than traditional music software, not only compared to AI music tools, but compared to all the music tools that came before them. We will release our partner models in the coming months. We will have much more to share soon.

It remains unclear whether Diplo owns shares in Suno. A representative for him did not immediately respond to requests for comment, although he spoke positively about using the platform.

Diplo’s own stance on AI in music is the opposite of SZA’s. In an interview in April, he said there was “no combat AI” and that he no longer needed human voices for his songs.

“The customer and accessibility are what’s always going to win,” he said.

“99% of people will want to like the best product, as quickly as possible and at the cheapest price, that’s what the American economy is all about.”

In a follow-up article on X, he told artists to “adapt or just give up and become a super driver.”

This dispute reflects a deepening fault line running through the music industry.

Producer Jack Antonoff recently called those who make music with AI “fucking ungodly” and “bad actors,” while Will.i.am and Timbaland have invested in AI companies.

SZA’s own label, RCA Records, is owned by Sony Music, which is currently in litigation against Suno and its competitor Udio.

Warner Music Group and Universal Music Group settled their own lawsuits against the platforms, a move that has since prompted a new lawsuit against the labels by the American Federation of Musicians.

Suno recently completed a $400 million investment round, with CEO Mikey Shulman saying contributors included prominent figures in the music industry, although the company declined to name them.