One of the biggest songs of the year so far in Sweden has been banned from the country’s charts after it was revealed as being AI-generated.
The track is Jag Vet, Du Ar Inte Min, or I Know You’re Not Mine, and it’s amassed more than 5 million Spotify streams catapulting it into the charts.
It’s credited to an artist called Jacub. However, it soon became clear that with no social media profile, media appearances or tour dates, there was something fishy about Jacub. It has taken an investigative journalist to get to the bottom of the mystery.
The hack in question, one Emanuel Karlsten, began digging and found that the song was registered to Stellar Music, a Danish music publishing and marketing firm. Karlsten worked out that the producers of the track (if you can call them that) worked in Stellar’s AI department. Eventually, they issued an email fessing up.
"We are not an anonymous tech company that just 'pressed a button,'" they wrote. "The team behind Jacub consists of experienced music creators, songwriters, and producers who have invested a lot of time, care, emotions, and financial resources."
They described AI as a "tool" or an "assisting instrument" within a "human-controlled creative process… Jacub is an artistic project developed and carried by a team of human songwriters, producers, and creators. The feelings, stories, and experiences in the music are real because they come from real people."
In which case, employ a real person to sing it, you might well say.
Anyway, Team Jacub’s explanation hasn’t impressed the Swedish music industry body, the IFPI, whose head Ludwig Werner said: "Our rule is that if it is a song that is mainly AI-generated, it does not have the right to be on the top list.”
Of course, Sweden’s stance contrasts with Billboard’s, which has allowed AI tracks into its charts based on the response of listeners. As yet, the UK’s Official Charts Company hasn’t had to take a definite stance on the issue, though a track that was originally recorded with AI vocals, I Ran by Haven, was heading for the charts before it was hit by a royalties claim by Jorja Smith, whose vocals the AI was allegedly trained on.
In the event, Haven re-recorded it with Kaitlin Aragon, a real human vocalist, and I Ran currently stands at Number Nine in the UK singles charts.
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