With rapid developments in AI and the implementation of the technology unilaterally across business sectors, there is heated debate in the Hollywood music scene over whether AI should be used in music production — and to what extent.
The debate intensified last week when a TikTok user by the handle ghostwriter977 posted a two-minute video that sounded a lot like Drake and The Weeknd.
The clip went viral, with more than 15 million views on TikTok and upwards of 600,000 streams on various streaming platforms.
The Universal Music Group, the body representing A-List celebs including Drake and The Weeknd, released a universal request to platforms to remove the video — because it wasn’t actually Drake and The Weeknd, it was an AI-generated soundalike.
The song was played on YouTube, Apple Music, Deezer, Spotify, and Tidal, along with TikTok, where it was posted originally.
The song, called ‘Heart On My Sleeve’ so closely resembles something that the two artists would produce themselves, that it starkly highlighted a much larger issue in the music industry.
