AI songs, from Drake and The Weeknd’s Heart on My Sleeve to Paul McCartney and Oasis copy Aisis, take pop music in an inhuman direction

Heart on My Sleeve, a recent collaboration between singers Drake and The Weeknd, went viral on the internet, but neither artist had anything to do with the song

The track was entirely AI-generated and is the latest in a string of non-human songs mimicking artists from Paul McCartney to Oasis. What are the implications?

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“Heart on My Sleeve”, a recent apparent collaboration between singers Drake (above) and The Weeknd, went viral, but neither artist had anything to do with the AI-generated song. The incident shows the potential for AI to disrupt the pop music industry. Photo: TNS

Published: 7:15pm, 26 Apr 2023

It didn’t take long for AI to hit its hyperspeed moment, which was ushered in when a new song by The Weeknd and Drake took the internet by storm.

It wasn’t because of the pairing of the two superstar artists, who have linked up in the past. It was the fact that neither of them had anything to do with the song; it was entirely generated by artificial intelligence.

Now artists, listeners and the recording industry have been thrown into an existential crisis that up until a few months ago seemed like the plot of a potential Black Mirror episode. And things are about to get really crazy, if they haven’t already.

“Heart on My Sleeve” is the name of the song, and it sounds exactly like a collaboration between the two megastars. But it’s the tip of the iceberg of what is possible and what is already here, and what could reshape the music business as we know it.

“Heart on My Sleeve” sounds like a collaboration between The Weeknd (above) and Drake, but neither artist had anything to do with the song. Photo: EPA-EFE/Caroline Brehman

In just the past few months, AI has gone from a thing you may have used to tweak your Instagram avatar to something that is ready to take over the world.