Photo Credit: Claudio Schwarz
A partly AI-generated folk-pop hit has now been barred from Sweden’s official singles chart. The track at the center of the controversy is “I Know, You’re Not Mine” (“Jag vet, du är inte min”) and is credited to virtual artist Jacub. Humans behind the track say AI is merely a tool in their creative process.
The song has amassed millions of streams worldwide and topped Spotify’s domestic rankings in Sweden, but it has now been ruled ineligible by Sverigetopplistan—Sweden’s official chart compiled by IFPI Sweden. An IFPI Sweden spokesperson confirmed the track was excluded from Sweden’s official chart. “While the song appears on Spotify’s own charts, it does not qualify for inclusion on the official chart under the current rules,” that spokesperson confirmed to The Guardian.
Complicating matters is that the song isn’t entirely generated by AI. Instead, AI factored heavily into a creative process steered by humans — just like the recently-barred ‘I Run’ by HAVEN. “Our rule is that if it is a song is mainly AI-generated, it does not have the right to be on the top list,” Ludvig Werner, IFPI Sweden’s CEO assessed.
The song is an acoustic guitar folk-pop song, with the artist’s profile page appearing to be a bearded man. Since it dropped, the song has been streamed more than five million times across the globe, including 200,000 plays in Sweden. IFPI Sweden says it acted after an investigative journalist revealed the song was registered to a Danish music publisher called Stellar. Two of the credited rights holders on the track appeared to work in Stellar’s AI department.
That introduces a sticky question: if AI-generated works aren’t eligible to chart, what about tracks partially-generated by AI?
“The artist Jacub’s voice and parts of the music are generated with the help of AI as a tool in our creative process,” confirmed Stellar. Stellar says it is a music company run by creative professionals rather than a tech or AI outfit — with AI simply part of the creative toolset.
“The creation has been a process that has been guided by a clear artistic vision,” the company said in a statement.
Meanwhile, the lack of clear labeling for AI-generated content raises questions after repeat AI successes. Would these AI-generated tracks be as successful as they are if people knew they were AI-generated, partially or otherwise?
Deezer goes to great lengths to label its AI content while Spotify currently does not. While Spotify is helping to work on the DDEX standard to label AI-generated content, for now the content does not have to be labeled as such when submitted to Spotify.
