SZA discovered something that made her furious: artificial intelligence companies had already trained their systems on 238 of her songs without permission or compensation.

The R&B superstar took to Instagram Stories to express her rage at musicians who support the technology, calling it “degenerate s###” and making clear that no explanation could justify what’s happening to artists’ work.

Her anger reflects a much larger battle unfolding between the music industry, AI companies, and the artists whose recordings are being used as training data without their knowledge.

The core issue centers on how companies like Suno and Udio built their AI music generators. Both platforms trained their algorithms by feeding them millions of copyrighted recordings from major record labels, learning patterns and styles from existing music to generate new compositions.

SZA’s frustration stems from discovering that her unreleased tracks were also included in these training datasets.

The companies essentially used artists’ creative work as the foundation for technology designed to replace them, all without asking permission or offering payment.

What makes this situation even more complicated is that the major labels themselves negotiated settlements with these AI companies.

Warner Music Group settled its lawsuit against Suno in November 2025, and both Universal and Warner reached agreements with Udio.

These deals allowed the AI platforms to continue operating legally, but they created a massive gap in compensation.

The American Federation of Musicians filed a lawsuit alleging that Universal and Warner licensed recordings featuring their members’ performances to Suno and Udio without compensating the actual musicians who created them.

The AFM’s argument is straightforward: when recordings are used in new ways, collective bargaining agreements require that artists and session musicians get paid.

The labels settled with the AI companies, but those settlements didn’t include provisions for individual artists or union members.

SZA’s 238 songs represent just one artist’s experience, but the scale of this problem is massive.

Millions of recordings from countless artists have been fed into these systems, and most of those artists have no idea their work was used this way or how to be compensated.