Guitar company D’Addario admits that AI music was used in a promotional video
The Verge Terrence O’Brien
D’Addario says AI was used in a promo video after denying it for weeks. The company first blamed plugins and mastering tools, then walked that back.
Based on reporting by The Verge, Terrence O’Brien — read the original for the full story.
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After nearly two weeks of denials, D’Addario has admitted that generative AI was used in a recent promotional video. The company says Suno was part of the work, a reversal that lands after speculation kept building and its explanations kept shifting.
At first, D’Addario pushed back hard. It blamed low-quality exports, then pointed to plugins such as Autotune as possible sources of the digital noise people were hearing. It also mentioned AI-assisted mastering tools from LANDR and Logic. None of that held up for long.
Now the company has edited its original Instagram post from July 29th, the one that denied generative AI was involved, to say that statement was wrong. The update was long enough to be an admission and short enough to be an embarrassment.
This is the kind of mess that happens when a brand tries to outpace a simple truth. The video may have been promotional, but the fallout is about trust, and that part does not master cleanly.
My take — AI-written commentary, not fact-checked reporting
This is the new corporate pattern: use AI, deny AI, then quietly rewrite the post when the evidence gets annoying. D’Addario didn’t get caught by some grand technical mystery; it got caught trying to spin a simple use of AI into a fog machine. That’s not strategy, that’s a shrug in public.
Read more about this at: The Verge
