Insiders liken AI to "the Ozempic of the music industry" as hitmakers reportedly hide their generator use

AI generators are spreading fast through professional music production, but the industry would rather not talk about it, according to extensive research by Rolling Stone.

Suno CEO Mikey Shulman told The Guardian earlier this year that people had described his own tool as "the Ozempic of the music industry—everybody is on it and nobody wants to talk about it."

That strict "don't ask, don't tell" mentality has become the norm among top producers and songwriters, according to extensive research by Rolling Stone. They're using the technology on a massive scale but staying silent in public, afraid of the backlash. The case of singer Teddy Swims, who faced heavy criticism after openly admitting he used AI, serves as a cautionary tale.

Producer David Baron is convinced that AI-generated music has already hit the Billboard charts, according to the report. Lauren Christy, a songwriter who has written for Avril Lavigne and Britney Spears, puts it bluntly. "The train has left the station." Major labels don't have working software to reliably detect AI music. Instead, the industry runs on a simple "honor system," which is part of the problem.

More than half of sample-based hip-hop tracks are reportedly AI-generated

The shift is especially dramatic in hip-hop. Instead of licensing real soul records from the 60s or 70s or hiring studio musicians, producers are using AI to generate fictional retro samples. Producer Young Guru, Jay-Z's longtime sound engineer, estimates that "more than half" of sample-based hip-hop is now made this way.

The quality of AI-generated voices has reached a point that unsettles even professionals. Christy describes a singer who reacted with frustration after hearing an AI demo. "I hate this robot. She's singing it better than I am."

A survey of more than 1,100 producers, engineers, and songwriters by Sonarworks found that seven out of ten respondents experiment with AI tools at least occasionally, with one in five using them regularly. Most rely on the technology for specific, time-saving tasks like audio restoration, stem separation, and mastering. Even sonic matching, the process of transferring the sound character of a reference recording to your own mix, now takes minutes instead of hours or days.

Smaller players are getting hit the hardest

The speed at which AI can deliver a finished demo is fundamentally changing how music gets made. According to the research, Christy got a text from a "big star" looking for new songs. She fed her lyrics and chords into an AI and sent back a polished demo almost immediately. The star wanted to record it.

Scenarios like these create new opportunities for established songwriters, but the market for everyone else is falling apart. Session musicians who used to record demos and studio assistants are getting fewer and fewer gigs, according to Rolling Stone. The market for stock and production music, the kind used in smaller TV productions, is also practically "toast."

Songwriter Michelle Lewis, who has written for Cher and Hilary Duff among others and co-founded the advocacy group Songwriters of North America (SONA), says writers in Nashville and Los Angeles are using tools like Suno to generate fully arranged demos from lyrics and chords.

"Privately, songwriters say, 'It's kind of awesome,'" Lewis says. "You don't have to split your copyright; you can write by yourself; and you don't have to pay a producer. For a lot of songwriters it's been very empowering." Lewis, who also works in children's animation, describes that market as "low-hanging fruit" for AI replacements. Overall, "no one's working."

Copyright uncertainty looms over the industry

The legal picture is still a mess. For starters, it's not even clear whether the music generators themselves are legal. Market leader Suno is currently caught up in copyright disputes but has already announced plans to work more closely with the music industry as it rolls out even more capable models later this year.

Suno 5.5, which just shipped, offers impressive quality and lets users incorporate their own voice into songs for the first time. A Suno investor recently admitted that the music generator is in direct competition with human music. That's a significant admission, since it could undermine the company's fair use defense in court.

Google already offers its own music generator, emphasizing that Lyria 3 was trained only on content Google had permission to use. OpenAI was reportedly planning to follow with its own music tool, though after the company's recent strategic shift and the decision to kill Sora, that seems less likely now.

Then there's the question of ownership. Artists still aren't sure whether AI-generated content, whether text, images, or sound, can even be copyrighted. An AI song without copyright protection would be worthless. For AI-generated samples specifically, there's the additional question of whether the output clears the creativity threshold required for protection. So far, regulators and copyright offices have decided this on a case-by-case basis, mostly ruling against AI.