Australia Bans AI-Generated Tracks From Official Music Charts to ‘Promote the Human Nature of Artistry’

The Australian Recording Industry Association (ARIA), the trade group representing the country’s music industry, has banned wholly AI-generated songs from its weekly charts that showcase the most popular tracks in Australia. The changes, which take effect Friday, were outlined in an update to the ARIA Charts’ code of practice, which states that music produced with generative AI can only appear on the charts if it was “substantially human made” and “raises no stream or chart manipulation concerns.” Wholly AI tracks are also banned from eligibility for ARIA’s Music Awards. Songs where AI was used as a tool will remain eligible. To differentiate the two classes, ARIA will now mandate the labels suggested last month by a league of music industry groups — including the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry, which represents the recording industry worldwide, and the Recording Industry Association of America — that denote whether a track was AI-generated or AI-assisted. Popular on Variety The updated guidance came after a cover of Madonna’s “Like a Prayer” charted for weeks on several of ARIA’s charts, including No. 4 on its Top 20 Australian Singles chart. ARIA’s move reflects the music industry’s complicated relationship to the rise of generative AI and platforms such as Suno and Udio, with record labels opting either for lawsuits or partnerships and streaming services wavering between mandated AI labeling, suggested transparency or weaving the technology into new products. “These changes reflect our intent to remain dynamic and promote the human nature of artistry in what is – to say the least – a rapidly developing space,” ARIA CEO Annaelle Herd said in a statement. “Artists already use AI tools in their work, the Charts can and should evolve to keep room for that, but music generated wholesale by services built on artists’ recordings is a different matter.” “The ARIA Charts will always remain a transparent measurement of the music Australia consumes, but a chart that rewards unlicensed AI output would undercut the very basis of the recorded music we exist to represent,” Herd added. The move follows the IFPI’s guidance last month that dictated how AI-generated music can appear on charts it manages across Latin America, the Middle East, Africa and Southeast Asia. That guidance said the music had to be mostly human-made, did not spark stream or chart manipulation concerns and had to have been made on an AI service that was “properly authorised and lawful.” In the U.S., AI-generated music has popped up across several of Billboard’s charts, including the Hot Gospel Songs chart and the Hot R&B Charts. A collection of the country’s top record labels — including Universal Music Group, Warner Music Group and Sony Music — demanded a framework last month similar to IFPI’s rules to ensure “a clear boundary between human-led creativity and works that are purely synthetic or generated by unauthorized AI models.”