On November 18th, I was invited to speak on Pro TV about how artificial intelligence is revolutionizing the music industry, following the news that a song generated 100% with AI reached number 1 on Billboard Digital.
The discussion explored how AI is transforming music production, from Romanian artists using AI to transform manele into jazz or hip-hop into blues, to a fully AI-generated song reaching the top of Billboard Digital charts with nearly 3 million streams in just a few days.
"People will feel cheated, but eventually things will settle. AI simply learned how to produce music and content. Just as ChatGPT learned how we humans speak by analyzing Wikipedia and the entire internet, an AI that makes music learned to make music from songs created by humans. If human producers and new music disappear, AI will plateau here. It's unlikely it will learn on its own to come up with creativity and innovation."
The Speed of AI Music Production
The conversation highlighted how dramatically AI has accelerated music production. As Ștefan Lucian, CEO of a production company, noted: "If in the '70s, to make a song, you stayed in the studio for at least a month to record it—meaning just to make a drum sound good you'd spend 3-4 days. In the '90s, the first ways to compose with software appeared. Today, with AI, you can make 2-3-4 songs per day."
Romanian artists like Deliric have been surprised to hear their own songs from years ago transformed into completely different genres. His 9-year-old track "Șefu" was remixed into a blues style that sounds like a song from the '50s, demonstrating AI's ability to reinterpret existing music.
The Billboard Breakthrough
The most significant development discussed was a song generated 100% with AI reaching number 1 on Billboard Digital. This milestone represents a shift in how music is created and consumed, raising questions about authenticity, creativity, and the future role of human artists.
The song achieved nearly 3 million streams in just a few days, demonstrating that audiences are willing to engage with AI-generated content when it meets their expectations for quality and style.
AI's Learning Process
The discussion addressed how AI systems learn to create music—by analyzing vast amounts of human-created content. This learning process raises important questions about the relationship between AI-generated music and the human creativity that trained it.
As Deliric observed: "I think we'll soon reach the point where we won't know which songs are made with AI and which aren't. Before, if you released an album every 3 or 5 years, that was okay. Now, artists release a song per week, 3 albums per year just to keep up with the crazy pace, because quality doesn't matter as much anymore, but the speed at which you deliver. So this is the next step of adaptation."
The Human Element
While AI can accelerate production and transform existing music, the discussion emphasized that human creativity remains essential. AI systems learn from human-created music, and without continued human innovation, AI-generated music would plateau at existing patterns and styles.
The conversation on Pro TV highlighted both the opportunities and challenges AI presents to the music industry—from democratizing music production to raising questions about authenticity, copyright, and the future value of human creativity in an AI-driven landscape.