Fears that AI will displace jobs, replace some relationships and offer questionable advice have made Gen Z wary of chatbots.
But now, young social media fans may have finally found a profitable outlet for the technology.
Thousands of people have been making AI-generated songs by feeding text messages from their ex-partners into chatbots.
The songs have gone viral, proving so popular that record labels and signed artists have jumped on the trend, with the aim of releasing some of the creations as proper songs.
Over the past seven days, there have been more than 4.38 million searches for “how to turn text into song”, alongside a 721 per cent increase in searches for “how to make AI song from texts”.
The videos typically present screenshots of shocking real life text exchanges overlaid with music generated by artificial intelligence, turning private conversations into comedic hits from different genres.
One video, posted last week by Joanna Sawyer, 25, amassed 5.6 million views and more than half a million likes after transforming messages from a former partner — who spoke about missing her “bum bum” — into a reggae-style track.
The clip, produced using the video editing app CapCut, has caught the attention of the social media star Molly-Mae Hague, who labelled it “an absolute banger”. Such is the pace of social media creativity that the song inspired more than 100 spin-off videos using the same sound, and Sawyer has been approached by a “major record label” to release it.
On the same day, Amber Ahn, 20, from London, created a song from texts sent by her ex telling her to “pick the f*** up”, using another AI music generator app, Suno.
Amber Ahn said the messages were “borderline harassment”
The UK rap-style track has since passed ten million views and one million likes, drawing tens of thousands of comments praising her decision not to answer the calls and asking for it to be released on Spotify.
When listeners compared the track’s style to that of Hackney-born rapper Not3s, his younger brother and sister showed him, and he posted a video featuring Ahn’s track.
Not3s said he was conflicted about AI-generated musicJed Cullen/Dave Benett/Getty Images
Ahn has now signed a contract with Broke Records for the song. Not3s re-recorded it in the studio this week including an extra verse written by him. “I thought, you know what? Let me just give the people what they want,” he said.
This week, they both teased the song on social media, encouraging fans to pre-save it on Spotify.
This comes at a time when AI-generated artists, such as “Sienna Rose”, are increasingly blurring the line between real and synthetic performers in the music industry.
Sienna Rose is an AI-generated R&B project
Taylor Swift’s company, TAS Rights Management, filed trademark applications this week to help to protect her voice and image from potential AI misuse.
As Cat Burns, the pop star and contestant in the BBC reality programme The Celebrity Traitors, said in a video this week: “As an artist I’m a bit frightened … these songs sound really good.”