As AI music generators such as Suno grow more sophisticated, the telltale signs of machine-made tracks have become subtler but remain detectable, particularly in guitar and drum textures. Early giveaways, such as basslines that never repeated a groove consistently, have largely disappeared, but AI still struggles to render the fine acoustic detail of physical instruments being played, meaning listeners and researchers can still spot fakes for now.

Guitars often "morph" mid-track, shifting from a strummed sound into something closer to a synthesiser, as heard in The Velvet Sundown's "Drift Beyond the Flame" — one of the first viral AI acts, exposed in 2025 as Suno-generated. Drums can sound oddly flat or dull, since AI struggles to capture the complex frequency cascade of a real snare hit. A Barcelona research team found that drums and guitars carry the strongest "codec-artifact" signatures because their energy sits in the high frequencies humans hear best, whereas vocals and bass are far harder to detect. Vocals remain the clearest human advantage, since AI-generated singers often produce impossibly long melodic runs without pausing for breath, as in the viral 2025 track "Walk My Walk" by Breaking Rust.