In July 2026, a mysterious singer named "Suna" quietly went viral on a short-video platform. Her covers span classics from the 1960s to the 1990s — Xianglian ("Love for the Hometown"), Ode to the Heroes, Water Town in a Dream — delivered in an endlessly shifting timbre, with vocals so impossibly smooth that there is not a single gasp for breath. She has never shown her face, and there is no performance footage — only a name and an account — yet that has not stopped her from racking up enormous like counts and spreading far and wide.
"There is an extremely high probability this was made with AI." That is the verdict of Lu Shiwei, a prominent music critic.
Suna = Suno — the Name Itself Is the Clue
Lu noticed that the pseudonym "Suna" itself hides a tell. One of today's most popular AI music-generation programs is called Suno — "it's not out of the question that whoever generated these songs with that software picked a homophonic name."
More decisive is the judgment at the technical level. As Lu analyzes it, the reason Suna's covers can shift timbre at will is that AI covers break through the physical limits of the human body: "You can set it to anyone's timbre or vocal style. It sounds silky smooth, but if you listen closely, there is no breathing between phrases — you can essentially conclude it is an AI cover."
This judgment points to a deeper fact: AI music-generation technology has already crossed the threshold of "you can tell it's a machine" and entered the stage where "ordinary listeners cannot tell real from fake."
Li Guyi's Tolerance — An Open Stance Before the Torrent of Technology
Faced with the fact that her classic songs were being covered by AI, Li Guyi's reaction surprised many — no anger, no legal action, but a tolerance bordering on the philosophical.
"I'm happy that through these cover songs, netizens think of me, and think of the classic works," Li Guyi said. Asked about the infringement risks the covers may involve, she acknowledged she is aware of them — but before the wave of rapidly advancing technology, she believes one cannot walk in reverse. "I hold a fairly open attitude. When a good song is sung, it's a good thing no matter who sings it — human or machine. Let everything else take its course; you shouldn't set up rigid frames at the very start. I believe the old situation will change with the arrival of a new era."
This is an attitude worth recording. When technology strikes the traditional copyright system, what emerged from a content creator was not a defensive reaction but an open embrace of technological evolution — something especially rare and precious at a moment when AI copyright disputes are growing ever more heated.
Zhou Shen's Copyright Notice — A Precursor to Defensive Rule-Setting
In contrast to Li Guyi's tolerance stands the approach of the singer Zhou Shen. In April 2026, upon releasing his song Chronicle of the Moon (《月之纪》), Zhou Shen simultaneously published a copyright notice:
"Without authorization, this work is prohibited from being used in any artificial-intelligence (AI)–related activities, including training, imitation, learning, and generation."
The moment the notice came out, it drew support from many musicians, music critics, and netizens. As many of them put it: "We are not against AI technology — we are against the unlicensed plundering of original content."
The significance of this notice lies not in its practical effect on protecting an individual singer's work, but in the precedent it set — individual creators moving, in the face of technological disruption, from passive acceptance to proactive rule-setting. While the legal system has yet to keep pace with the speed of technological development, such a "contract-style declaration" has become a temporary guardrail between creators and AI.
Three Stances in the Wait-and-See Period — A Spectrum From Silence to Declaration
For now, the music industry's response to AI covers remains largely in a wait-and-see phase. Most withhold judgment, while voices openly endorsing or opposing the practice surface from time to time. From Li Guyi's tolerance to Zhou Shen's declaration, to the silent waiting of the majority of creators, three basic stances can be identified:
- Open embrace (represented by Li Guyi): technological evolution is unstoppable; rather than fighting it, better to let it run its course and leave copyright disputes to time and new rules
- Defensive declaration (represented by Zhou Shen): during the institutional gap, use individual legal notices to draw bottom lines while waiting for legislation to follow
- Silent wait-and-see (the majority): no clear stance formed yet, or still assessing AI's actual impact on their own work
These three stances are not ranked from best to worst; they are the normal spectral distribution that emerges when a new industrial technology strikes a traditional field. The real question is this: once the volume of AI-generated content reaches some critical threshold, how will the tensions among these three stances translate into institutional answers?
The real value of the Suna cover phenomenon lies not in whether any given song was covered well, but in the fact that it reveals a rule vacuum still in formation — technology has already crossed the threshold of "does it sound human?", yet the copyright system has not answered the fundamental question of "when AI sings a human's song, does that count as infringement?" Zhou Shen's notice and Li Guyi's response represent, respectively, two individual coping paths during this rule vacuum. The collision and evolution of these two paths will shape the legal foundations of the music industry in the AI era.