Three songs generated by artificial intelligence topped music charts this week, reaching the highest spots on Spotify and Billboard charts.
Walk My Walk and Livin’ on Borrowed Time by the outfit Breaking Rust topped Spotify’s “Viral 50” songs in the US, which documents the “most viral tracks right now” on a daily basis, according to the streaming service. A Dutch song, We Say No, No, No to an Asylum Center, an anti-migrant anthem by JW “Broken Veteran” that protests against the creation of new asylum centers, took the top position in Spotify’s global version of the viral chart around the same time. Breaking Rust also appeared in the top five on the global chart.
These three songs are part of a flood of AI-generated music that has come to saturate streaming platforms. A study published on Wednesday by the streaming app Deezer estimates that 50,000 AI-generated songs are uploaded to the platform every day – 34% of all the music submitted.
It is a question of authorship. What I don’t approve of is zero effort AI slop. But the use of CGI in movies is OK because it serves the vision of the director. The usage of samples in music is OK if the use is transformative. Autotuning is pushing it but can be OK if use is limited or transformative. Even AI tools can be OK if authorship remains human. But an end-to-end pipeline of endless soulless AI generated slop is not OK. So it is very a question of degrees. AI generated/authored works should be labelled as such. Also the label should contain the degree to which AI was used. Not simply an either/or tag.