Drake, The Weeknd voices cloned using AI
Heart on my Sleeve , a song created using AI by a TikTok user and which went viral across several online platforms, landed in hot water for violating copyright law. Created by TikToker @Ghostwriter977, the song was trained on vocals by Drake and The Weeknd and was supposedly produced by Metro Boomin. The song was quickly removed from TikTok, video, and music streaming services following takedown requests issued by Universal Music Publishing Group (UMPG), which said it violated copyright law. According to the song's 'creator', 'I was a ghostwriter for years and got paid close to nothing just for major labels to profit'. 'The future is here.' System 🤖 Unknown Operator: Spotify; Apple; Deezer; Tidal; TikTok; YouTube Developer: Country: USA; Global Sector: Media/entertainment/sports/arts Purpose: Generate music Technology: Text-to-music; NLP/text analysis; Neural network; Deep learning; Machine learning Issue: Copyright; Transparency Legal, regulatory 👩🏼⚖️ Universal Music Publishing Group (2023). Discord takedown request US Copyright Office (2023). Copyright Registration Guidance: Works Containing Material Generated by Artificial Intelligenc e (pdf)
- Date it happened
- 2023-04-01
- Organisation involved
- Spotify; Apple; Deezer; Tidal; TikTok; YouTube
This incident was imported from AIAAIC and is used under CC BY-SA 4.0. Our additions to it — the structured fields, the translation, the checks against other reports — are published under the same licence.
This is a record of what was reported, not a finding that anyone broke the law. If it names your organisation and you believe it is wrong, the corrections process is free and open to everyone.