A brief history on Drake and The Weeknd's inexistent new hit

What will the relationship between Artificial Intelligence and the recording industry be like in the future? Over the past few days, a story has been circulating about Heart on My Sleeve, a song featuring Drake and The Weeknd that in just a few days has accumulated over 600 thousand streams on Spotify, 15 million views on TikTok, and 275 thousand views on YouTube. The problem, however, is that the song in question does not exist, or rather it was never recorded by either of the two artists in question, and was indeed created via artificial intelligence. Apparently, the author of this song is Ghostwriter977, a TikTok user who, covered in a white sheet and wearing a pair of sunglasses, has declared war on the record industry by AI to take back what has been taken from him over the years, according to what he wrote. Although little is known about his true identity, Ghostwriter977 himself stated in the comments of one of the videos that he has worked for years as a songwriter in the music industry, working on numerous hits while drawing a consistently low profit, hence the choice to use technology to take back the ill-gotten gains in a head-on collision that saw its first development a few days ago.

Universal Music Group has already requested and obtained the removal of the song from Spotify, where it had been uploaded from Ghostwriter977's own profile. «The training of generative AI using our artists’ music as well as the availability of infringing content created with generative AI on DSPs [digital service providers], begs the question as to which side of history all stakeholders in the music ecosystem want to be on: the side of artists, fans and human creative expression, or on the side of deep fakes, fraud and denying artists their due compensation,» a Universal spokesperson told Billboard. AI is starting to be a serious concern for the music industry, to the point that last week UMG itself called on all streaming platforms to block AI from accessing the label's tracks, threatening to be prepared to «take action to protect the rights of our artists.» As early as last October, the RIAA, Recording Industry Association of America, warned about the behavior of AI companies, which it deemed unlawful and in violation of copyright. Drake himself had publicly expressed his frustration after his voice was used to create a feature in Ice Spice's Munch. «This is the final straw AI,» the Canadian rapper had written in an Instagram Story, while online an AI version of WAP went viral in which, in addition to Cardi B and Megan Thee Stallion, Drake himself was featured.

Meanwhile, covers of famous songs recanted by other artists are multiplying on TikTok: Kanye West singing Justin Bieber, Michael Jackson singing Bruno Mars, and vice versa. While in some cases the results underscore all the limitations of technology in this field, in others they verge on realism quite convincingly, thus opening the door to various possibilities. While Kanye West's Love Yourself has thousands of views on the platform, some have already speculated about the possibility of AI being used to create new songs posthumously. «There's going to be so many Juice Wrld songs, watch this,» said Anthony Fantano, bringing to light a hypothesis that adds another degree of concern to a story that is greatly disrupting the entire music industry.