Is pop star Sienna Rose really a singer? And is she really Black?

"Hypothetically, if u watched this 2x u would be the reason my little song went viral,” reads the text on a video posted by singer-songwriter Sienna Rose on Instagram. Her smooth neo-soul song Into the Blue, which currently has over 12 million listens on Spotify, plays in the background. But there’s something eerie about Rose: the glitchiness of her facial expressions if you zoom in close, the sheen of the song – polished in a way that is uncommon for new artists. But, most suspiciously, it’s the speed in which she appears to be putting music out, releasing two albums and two EPs – 32 songs – between September and December last year. Rolling Stone described the frequency of her releases as "implausible” and concluded that she had to be the work of artificial intelligence. 

Still, AI creations appear to be achieving the kinds of successes real musicians dream of. AI R&B artist Xania Monet signed a record deal with Hallwood Media for $3m and became the first AI artist to chart on Billboard with the song How Was I Supposed to Know?  

It might seem like tech-savvy entrepreneurialism, but the truth is that many of these fabricated songs are often just patchworks of real ones. AI music-generation programs are trained using real copyrighted music. When a song by British dance act Haven called I Run went viral in late 2025, singer Jorja Smith’s record label, FAMM, released a statement accusing Haven of purposeful deception by leading the public to believe it featured Smith’s vocals when in fact they were AI-generated. “AI technology is being trained on the labour and ingenuity of the very same creators it intends to replace without any due credit or compensation,” FAMM said.

Unlike techniques such as sampling, where producers integrate an existing song or sound into a new recording, AI-generated music is wholly detached from music history. Sampling is about discovery, taste and homage. It’s the foundation of genres such as hip-hop, which heavily samples old funk and soul records. But the influences behind an AI-generated song are opaque and less traceable. AI emulsifies a colossal amount of material into one piece of reconstituted meat. It’s not hyperbolic to question what this means for the future of artistry if there is little to no process or craft involved in the making of music. Advocates of the software claim it revolutionises access, and is a democratisation of creativity, but it’s hard to see what an infinite supply of productivity-driven art has to do with equality. 

When AI-generated music first became prolific online, it was obvious and mostly absurd, like the viral trend of Spongebob's Patrick covering classic R&B songs, but now it’s becoming harder to detect by the ear alone. So what does this mean for listeners? Multiple studies have highlighted the relationship between music consumption and wellbeing. “People listen to music to regulate arousal and mood, to achieve self-awareness, and as an expression of social relatedness,” according to a 2013 academic paper. It’s also true that listeners can become deeply attached to musicians and particular songs which can, in turn, form essential parts of their identity and memories. As Jude Rogers writes in The Sound of Being Human, research suggests that the medial prefrontal cortex, responsible for “tracking the movement of melodies”, may also be responsible for “the preservation of a person’s sense of self and how they view and define themselves”.  With AI, you have no real way of knowing who or what could be soundtracking your life. 

Then there’s the elephant in the room. Many of the AI artists who are seeing huge success are “Black” artists making Black music. It’s very telling that Sienna Rose's first releases were presented with images of a white, redheaded woman, but the anonymous creator changed to images of a Black woman when that wasn’t gaining enough traction. The bedrock of soul and R&B is authenticity and integrity, created by African American communities facing oppression in the 1940s and 1950s. It’s maddening to see these genres pastiched and turned into mere code. Another AI creation, who has seen success in the gospel charts, is “Christian” artist Solomon Ray. Some listeners were outraged, others vowed to keep listening. In a way, AI is the antithesis of monotheism – the rapid expansion and omnipresence of AI is the greatest threat to the idea of one supreme creator.

Still, there are efforts to tackle the developing technology head-on. Last weekend, Pull the Plug, a community of people concerned with the impact of AI, held “March Against The Machines” – a demonstration in which 500 people marched through the streets of central London. Protesters gathered afterwards for a People’s Assembly and deliberated on their concerns with AI and what they would like to see the UK government do about it. “A proposal came up to have a ‘human-made’ certification for creative content – like ‘organic’ – and government economic protections,” one attendee said. “There was also consensus that the user needs to be the one to decide how much AI they want on their platforms, including streaming – that it must always be ‘opt-in’.” 

While there are many more issues around AI to worry about than just song-making – from mass surveillance to AI psychosis, not to mention the environmental costs of data centres – its encroachment on the music industry can’t be ignored. Last week, Google announced that it had acquired AI music-generating platform Producer AI, referring to it as a "creative collaborator".

Music has always been about real human collaboration. It’s a totem to how we connect and relate to each other and the times we’re living in. Art isn't product alone, it's journey too. AI-generated music leaves no space for serendipity or uncertainty. Diving into the unknown but keeping hope is a defining part of music-making. The imperfections, the experimentation, the unexplainable are all lost when songs are churned out of a machine in seconds. Innovation shouldn’t be about speed and ease, but rather, nurturing artists to utilise their imaginations and take risks. For better or for worse, that’s the divine essence of creative expression.  

Kadish Morris is a poet, critic and a Nerve contributing writer. In 2020 she won the Eric Gregory prize awarded to poets under 30