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Entertainment·The Trace·Automated dual reading·Published 2026-07-13

generative AI voice cloning in popular music

Source article: Visual Arts are the Only Arts with Morals: Generative AI and Aural Arts

E]verybody who creates for a living should be in code red." 1 In early April 2023, TikTok user Ghostwriter977 posted a piece titled "Heart on My Sleeve" (stylized in lowercase) that seemed to be sung by Drake and The Weeknd. 2 However, as the song gained massive popularity, Drake and The Weeknd's recording label released a chilling statement: the voices in the song, which had convinced millions of listeners, were, in fact, not Drake or The Weeknd, but an artificially generated imitation made from recordings of D…

TRV-2026-0146Peer-reviewedPermanent record — cite & verify
Trace impact reading

Contested: both sides are scored from claims and sources, not community votes.

P 66The P score combines the specificity and measured human impact of the grounded problem claim with the strength of this Trace’s cited sources.G 66The G score combines the specificity and measured human impact of the grounded gain claim with the strength of this Trace’s cited sources.
Visual Arts are the Only Arts with Morals: Generative AI and Aural Arts

"Film crew" by Michael Fötsch, CC BY-SA 2.0.

The quick read

By June 2026, a law review article described how generative AI had been used to create a viral 2023 track, 'Heart on My Sleeve,' that imitated Drake and The Weeknd. The label confirmed the vocals were not the artists but an AI imitation trained on their recordings, after millions had been convinced it was real.

The case illustrates why voice cloning matters for the music industry: the same capability that allows realistic vocal reproduction also enables large-scale listener deception and challenges to artist identity and attribution. What remains unclear from this excerpt is how platforms, labels, and law will detect and govern such imitations at scale.

Main points
  • In April 2023 a TikTok user posted 'Heart on My Sleeve' that sounded like Drake and The Weeknd.
  • The artists' label later stated the vocals were an artificially generated imitation made from recordings of their songs.
  • The article notes AI in the art market grew from $0.62 billion to $0.88 billion from 2025 to 2026.
Gain

Generative AI can learn from large music datasets to create new compositions and realistically reproduce a specific artist's voice.

Problem

An AI-generated imitation of Drake and The Weeknd's voices in a viral track convinced millions of listeners it was authentic, requiring a label disclosure.

The rundown

Ghostwriter977 posted the track in early April 2023 on TikTok, where it gained massive popularity before the deception was revealed.

The piece defines generative AI as a machine learning model that learns to generate content similar to the data it was trained on and can learn and develop without human intervention.

Sources

Reader signal

How should this claim be treated?

The debate