What sounds a lot like a collaboration by Toronto superstars Drake and The Weeknd has gone viral on social media platforms like TikTok.
“Heart on My Sleeve” was purportedly generated by Artificial Intelligence (AI) and dropped late last week on a TikTok account set up by @ghostwriter977, who appears in a video disguised as an old school ghost. (So this would be sheet music? - ed.)
“The future is here,” they wrote in the comments. Later, @ghostwriter977 (who is also @imghostwriter on YouTube) claimed: “I was a ghostwriter for years and got paid close to nothing just for major labels to profit.”
There is a link in the bio to a page on laylo.com, where visitors can enter a phone number to receive an AI-generated Drake cover of Colbie Caillat’s “Bubbly.”
Author Mitchell Cohen of AppSumo opined on Twitter that the tracks are “all a genius marketing stunt” for Laylo, a tech startup boasting that it “powers drops for some of the world’s biggest creators and brands.”
According to Cohen, “Laylo is getting MILLIONS of impressions to their page from this. So would be legendary if they were in fact the ghost.”
The recording industry is general not amused by AI. Last week, the Financial Times reported that Universal Music Group (UMG) “has become increasingly concerned about AI bots using their songs to train themselves to churn out music that sounds like popular artists. AI-generated songs have been popping up on streaming services and UMG has been sending takedown requests ‘left and right,’ said a person familiar with the matter.”
UMG told the Financial Times: “We have a moral and commercial responsibility to our artists to work to prevent the unauthorized use of their music and to stop platforms from ingesting content that violates the rights of artists and other creators.”
In the comments of one of his TikTok posts promoting “Heart on My Sleeve,” @ghostwriter977 urges people to “go stream before the lawsuit.”
Neither Drake nor The Weeknd have publicly reacted to their AI-generated collaboration.
Canadian artist Grimes, an AI advocate, is scheduled to speak about AI in a keynote address at the International Music Summit in Ibiza later this month.
This article was not generated by AI but rather by a human with limited intelligence.