“This is just the beginning,” ghostwriter 977 wrote on his Tiktok account, while new videos including the song are being released repeatedly.

The song, which mixes hip-hop and rap, recreates the two artists’ voices by simulating a conversation about actress Selena Gomez, with whom singer The Weeknd recently had a brief relationship.

In a statement, Universal Music Group said it “raises the question of which side all stakeholders in the music industry want to be on: the side of artists, fans and human creative expression, or the side of deep fraud, fraud, and depriving artists of financial payments.”

Last March, the company sent emails to streaming platforms including Spotify and Apple, asking them to stop artificial intelligence services from using copyrighted melodies and lyrics from artists’ songs, the Financial Times newspaper reported. This letter is informative.

The use of artificial intelligence in music has sparked debate in the music community, with some decrying legal violations and others praising the technology’s capabilities in the field.

In one of his recent shows, French DJ David Guetta used artificial intelligence to create the voice of rapper Eminem. Geeta did not market the song, explaining to the BBC that she “wanted to open the door for discussion to raise awareness”.