06/30/2026
🙌🏽
Grammy-winning singer-songwriter SZA has escalated her war against generative AI, launching a fierce public broadside against the industry after discovering that 238 of her songs, including several unreleased tracks, were used to train artificial intelligence models without her consent.
In a blistering series of social media posts, the artist took aim at the massive generative AI music platform Suno and pointedly accused renowned producer Diplo of industry complicity.
Writing on her private Instagram account, SZA claimed that Diplo holds equity in Suno and is actively attempting to train the platform on the "best and brightest Black minds" in the music industry.
While Diplo has no public ties to Suno, he was recently named as an investor in the billion-dollar AI startup Aaru, and he previously went viral for telling creatives that they must adapt to AI or "give up and become an Uber driver."
SZA’s public call-out frames him as a proxy for tech-industry exploitation.
Beyond the immediate copyright dispute, SZA explicitly framed the issue around racial equity and cultural extraction.
She noted that while Black Americans make up 13 percent of the U.S. population, their sound and perspective disproportionately influence global culture, leaving them highly vulnerable to creative theft by tech companies.
"DO NOT GIVE AWAY YOUR VIBRANIUM!!!" she warned fellow Black musicians, urging them to stop training AI with their genius and calling the tech figures behind the models "weird ass vultures."
This is not the first time the singer has attacked generative AI. She has previously connected the rise of programs like ChatGPT and Grok to environmental racism, arguing that the heavy pollution and excessive water consumption required to run AI data centers disproportionately impact underserved Black and brown communities.
Suno, which is currently being sued by three major record labels for copyright infringement, maintains that using copyrighted music for training falls under the legal protection of the fair-use doctrine.
However, SZA made her stance on the technology unequivocally clear, writing to any musician who supports it: "Your disgusting and there’s NOTHING YOU COULD EVER SAY TO ME TO MAKE THIS OKAY."
