For a very long time music producers would pirate their samples, plugins and presets. The idea was that nobody could tell how illegal these tools were in the finished product, so there was no reason not to steal. It was genuinely the gold standard for a while, and even established artists like Diplo, Porter Robinson and Kanye West were caught pirating content en-masse.
Nowadays there isn't the same attitude so much. Many people still pirate sounds, but skeptic listeners will sometimes ask musicians to show off their project files to embarass them over how many pirated Cymatics drums they use and their version of Sylenth licensed to "RuTorrent".
It wouldn't surprise me if the same thing happened today. AI-assisted development will take off for a while, and then people will ask self conscious questions like "nice art, who's your art director?"
I mean, not always. It's hard to be super secretive in a live situation, but I'd wager many musicians have successfully hidden their pirated plugins.
A lot of people have been caught anyways. Steve Aoki accidentally left a visibly pirated Sylenth VST in a promo vid, Porter Robinson and Skrillex both got caught with pirated plugins during track breakdowns, Kanye West posted a video with 30 tabs of The Pirate Bay open to download Logic Pro... the list goes on. It was extremely common in the early days of digital music production (and still is today, to an extent), but the backlash has pushed most legit production houses to legit licensed software.
Nowadays there isn't the same attitude so much. Many people still pirate sounds, but skeptic listeners will sometimes ask musicians to show off their project files to embarass them over how many pirated Cymatics drums they use and their version of Sylenth licensed to "RuTorrent".
It wouldn't surprise me if the same thing happened today. AI-assisted development will take off for a while, and then people will ask self conscious questions like "nice art, who's your art director?"