D'Addario Reverses Course, Admits AI Tool Was Used in Guitar String Promo Video

D'Addario has admitted that the AI music generation tool Suno Studio was used to regenerate a track in a recent promotional video, reversing nearly two weeks of public denials. The company confirmed the finding on August 12 after completing an internal review, according to The Verge.

The promotional video was a demo for D'Addario's NYXL high-density electric guitar strings, designed for extended-range guitars and low tunings. D'Addario had initially denied any use of generative AI in the clip's production when accusations surfaced the month before, Guitar World reported on August 10.

Rather than issuing a new statement, D'Addario edited its original July 29th Instagram post, which had denied the use of generative AI. The updated post now states that the original denial was wrong. In it, D'Addario said it completed a full review and confirmed that Suno Studio was used to regenerate the original track that had been recorded for the promotional video (The Verge; Guitar.com).

D'Addario stated it was fed false information, which it said led to its inaccurate public statements about the promotional video, as reported by Guitar World via Facebook on August 11.

The admission was precipitated in part by independent investigation. Guitarist and YouTuber Rhett Shull obtained the original Logic session files from D'Addario and concluded that Suno was probably used to regenerate the original recording (The Verge). Logic session files are the project files from Apple's Logic Pro digital audio workstation, containing the individual tracks, effects settings, and production metadata for a recording. Shull's findings appear to have increased public pressure on the company, though the verified facts do not establish a direct causal link between his analysis and D'Addario's internal review.

D'Addario's updated Instagram post also apologized for heavy-handed comment moderation during the period of denial. The company acknowledged that it had deleted critics' comments and blocked users who raised questions about potential AI involvement (The Verge).

In the same post, D'Addario stated that it does not support AI-generated music and will require both employees and creative partners to disclose any use of generative AI going forward (The Verge).

The timeline is notable. D'Addario's original Instagram denial was posted on July 29. Guitar World first reported the company's confirmation of generative AI use on August 10. Digital Music News published its coverage on August 11, and The Verge and Guitar.com followed on August 12 with additional detail about the Suno Studio confirmation and the Instagram post edits.

The broader context here is a pattern that has surfaced repeatedly as generative AI tools move into creative supply chains. A vendor or partner uses an AI tool at some stage of production, the use goes undisclosed, and when questions arise the instinct is to deny rather than investigate. The two-week gap between the original denial and the corrected statement is relatively long in an era when social media scrutiny can compress such cycles to days. D'Addario's decision to edit the original Instagram post rather than issue a new one is also worth noting as a disclosure practice, since editing a prior denial in place can obscure the historical record for anyone who encounters the post later without seeing the original version.

The comment moderation behavior adds another dimension. Deleting critics' comments and blocking users during a period when the company's public stance was factually wrong compounds the reputational damage beyond the AI use itself. D'Addario's apology for that moderation acknowledges as much.

The policy change D'Addario announced is the kind of internal governance step that several creative-industry companies have begun adopting as AI tools become more accessible and their outputs harder to distinguish from human-created work. Whether D'Addario's policy is enforced through contractual language, workflow checkpoints, or a lighter-touch honor system is not specified in the available facts.

The role of independent technical analysis in this case is also instructive. Rhett Shull's examination of the Logic session files provided a concrete, verifiable basis for challenging the company's denial, rather than relying on auditory suspicion alone. As AI-generated music becomes more difficult to distinguish by ear, access to project files and production metadata may become the primary mechanism for verifying claims about creative provenance. This is analogous to the way source code audits and build logs function in software supply chain verification, where provenance claims are increasingly expected to be backed by verifiable artifacts rather than assertions.