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Grammy Award winning American singer-songwriter SZA has slammed AI and artists who “support this degenerate shit,” having discovered that more than 200 of her songs have been used to train AI.
Posting on Instagram Stories, the 36-year-old behind hits like ‘Kill Bill’ and ‘Luther’ with Kendrick Lamar shared the results of a search of her name on an AI music database. The search apparently revealed that 238 of her songs had been used in AI training datasets.
“Checked and music AI has trained off 238 of my songs. I’m certain some unreleased. If you’re a musician and you support this degenerate shit? You’re disgusting and there’s NOTHING YOU COULD EVER SAY TO ME TO MAKE THIS OKAY. I hope u have the life u deserve.”
SZA took specific aim at the AI music-making company Suno and producer Diplo in a subsequent post.
“Ionno who needs to hear this but diplo has equity in suno and is actively attempting to train it on the best and brightest black minds of writers and producers,” she wrote. “We make up 13% of the American population yet influence the world with our sound and perspective.”
“I AINT HEARD A WHITE AI SONG YET .. why so disproportionate? We have no protection in legislature medical or creative,” she continued. “The easiest to steal from. DO NOT GIVE AWAY YOUR VIBRANIUM !!! DO NOT TRAIN AI WITH YOUR GENIUS. F–k these weird a– vultures.”
Last week, Suno’s chief product officer wrote a defense of the AI music generator.
“At Suno, preserving artistry and human creativity is just as important as product innovation itself,” Jack Brody wrote on LinkedIn. “We know that’s easy to be skeptical about – especially if you haven’t actually immersed yourself in our product. But most of the people building Suno are musicians.”
He continued: “Empowering human creativity is why we show up, not just some corporate positioning. We believe companies building AI have a responsibility to invest in safeguards with the same level of ambition and rigor that they bring to building products.”
“From our earliest days, we worked to build protections directly into the foundation of our platform. That includes clear rules prohibiting users from uploading or distributing content they don’t own or have the rights to use, meaningful enforcement when those rules are violated, and partnerships with industry-standard providers like Audible Magic, Musixmatch, and ACRCloud to help us identify and prevent misuse.”
He added: “One of the most common questions people ask about AI is whether models can reproduce material from their training data. Our answer is simple: no, that should not happen. Our philosophy has always been that AI should help people create new music, not replicate someone else’s. That’s why we 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 do not use artist names as a category of training metadata – meaning 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.”
It’s not the first time SZA has criticised AI. In March, she told i-D Magazine: “I feel like I’m at war because of AI.”
“It’s happening disproportionately with Black music,” she explained. “Why am I hearing AI covers of Olivia Dean, when Olivia Dean just came the fuck out? She can’t even collect the streams. I’m also really offended by the type of Black music that’s coming out of AI. Weird, stereotypical struggle music.”
Last year, she also hit out at AI users for being “codependent on a machine”, saying: “Please Google how much energy and pollution it takes to run AI… Please Google the beautiful Black cities like Memphis that are SUFFERING because of Twitter’s new AI system. PLEASE JUST GOOGLE ENVIRONMENTAL RACISM.”
“AI doesn’t give a fuck if you live or die I promise. THERE IS A PRICE FOR CONVENIENCE AND BLACK AND BROWN [COMMUNITIES] WILL PAY THE BRUNT OF IT EVERYTIME,” she added. “We won’t get it til it’s too late.”