July 15, 2026 — by Lulu Liu in Uncategorized
If anyone has spent any time on the K-pop algorithm section of Bilibili or any social media, they have probably come across AI voice cover videos — fans feeding existing songs through AI models trained on different idols’ voices to produce results of “What if Group A sang Group B’s song.” The titles are usually upfront, and nobody is deceiving anyone. It is simply a fun corner of fan creativity, and the results are sometimes impressive enough to fill the comments section with people saying they wish it were real. I have watched enough of them to understand the entertaining part.
But here is the thing that has been sitting in the back of my mind for a while: the technology used to make those harmless, clearly labeled AI covers is the same technology now used to produce songs that are charting on Spotify, going viral on TikTok, and fooling many listeners who were never informed that what they were hearing was not created and sung by a human. The line between fun creations and commercial deception is much thinner than many people realize.
The clearest example is “We Are Charlie Kirk“, an AI-generated gospel tribute released by an anonymous account called Spalexma six days after Kirk’s death in September 2025. The song topped Spotify’s Viral 50 Global chart, was used in over 635k TikTok videos, and debuted on the Billboard Hot Christian Songs chart, not mainly because people seriously loved it, but because it was uncanny enough to become a meme. Many listeners, including me for a while, thought it was made by a real artist. More on the related issue: according to a Forbes article, a YouTube video purporting to be Ed Sheeran’s tribute to Kirk gathered 175,000 views, with one commenter saying, “I had no idea about Ed’s appreciation for Charlie. There is truly hope.” The description of that video clearly states “Made with AI,” but they comment either did not read it or did not care.
Screenshot via TikTok
Then there is “GG EZ“, a more recent AI-generated kpop-style track that went massively viral as a dance challenge. BTS’s Jungkook did the challenge; IVE’s Yujin did the challenge; ENHYPEN, NCT WISH, ITZY… The list goes on. Most idols and fans had no idea the song was AI-generated until a former Weeekly member named Jiyoon publicly refused to participate, explaining she would not promote an AI track. Her statement went viral partly because of the refusal itself and partly because she mentioned that even restaurants in Korea are now playing AI-generated music like this instead of real songs because it is free. This example is more telling than any abstract industry reports I have seen.
Screenshots via Instagram Reels
This is where it connects to everything I have been writing about for a while. Recommendation algorithms do not distinguish between human-made and AI-made music, nor are they trained to exclude AI-made music for ethical reasons. They optimize for engagement, and if any AI song is catchy or meme-able enough to drive the trends, it gets pushed as hard as anything a human artist spent months or even years making. The K-pop fan-made covers exist in a similar gray zone: affectionate, community-based, and built on the same AI voice-cloning technology that could eventually put words in an artist or celebrity’s mouth without their consent.
The fun, nonprofit version and the harmful version of this technology are not always separated. They are the same tool used at different levels and with different intent. And the gap between what it is capable of and what most listeners are capable of seeing is what this blog has been about.
Leave a Reply