Why AI in music is making listeners react emotionally
· Scroll
The use of artificial intelligence is quietly reshaping the music people listen to – sometimes without them realising it.
Visit asg-reflektory.pl for more information.
Millions of music listeners have recently encountered this shift through a viral Afro-soul cover of Papaoutai, the 2013 hit by Belgian artist Stromae. The cover has skyrocketed in popularity across streaming platforms and social media.
But unknown to most audiences, it was created using AI, according to Deezer, a French music-streaming service.
The Afro-soul cover highlights a growing challenge – the difficulty identifying when generative AI has been used in production – and how audiences, platforms and artists are struggling to respond.
When Stromae first released the upbeat dance song Papaoutai as part of the album Racine carrée, it topped the charts in Belgium, France, Germany, Israel, the Netherlands and Switzerland. More than a decade after release, it’s still one of the most-viewed French-language songs on YouTube.
Some 12 years later, in December 2025, an Afro-soul cover of Papaoutai was uploaded to Spotify. While it’s hard to track the exact reach of the song due to various removals and re-uploads on YouTube, Instagram and TikTok, the song currently has almost 80 million streams on Spotify.
The authorship of the Afro-soul version is commonly...