Australia’s recording industry drew a hard line on artificial intelligence this week, announcing that songs created entirely by AI will no longer count toward the country’s official charts or its top music awards.
“The ARIA charts are about tracking consumption and sales of music in Australia, but they’re also about celebrating human artistry and success,” said Annabelle Herd, chief executive of the Australian Recording Industry Association, known as ARIA.
The updated Charts Code of Practice, announced last Tuesday, takes effect with the chart dated Monday, Aug. 31. To qualify, ARIA says a recording must be “substantially human-made,” raise no manipulation concerns and rely only on AI tools licensed to use the material they were trained on. Songs that fail those tests can be pulled from the charts, stripped of past positions, or ruled ineligible for ARIA Awards altogether.
ARIA didn’t make this call in a vacuum.
Queensland DJ and producer Josh Fawaz released a dance remake of Madonna’s “Like a Prayer” earlier this year that used AI-generated vocals and AI drums layered under his own production. The track spent four weeks atop Australia’s national radio airplay chart, peaked at number two on the ARIA Top 20 Singles chart and was still sitting at number four when the new rules were announced.
“I understand that AI in music isn’t for everyone and that’s fine,” Fawaz told Arise News, seemingly unbothered by the backlash his cover stirred up. “Good to see Aussie artists killing it globally!!”
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“There is so much good art in Australia and something like AI coming along…it’s like, get it out,” Peking Duk member Adam Hyde told SBS News, arguing the technology has been trained on musicians’ work without their consent. “AI is using our stuff,” he said. “It’s using a lot of our peers’ stuff.”
“We’re not particularly interested in including AI-generated music as part of that process, particularly when it’s taking up a spot from an Australian artist,” Herd said, making clear the ban targets unlicensed AI use rather than the technology itself.
“Large commercial AI music generation companies have assumed they can scrape training data without permission,” University of New South Wales associate professor Oliver Bown told Arise News, echoing Hyde’s concern from the research side.
ARIA’s move lines up with global standards the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry set in July, which push charts worldwide toward the same “substantially human-made” bar. Spotify, for its part, has taken a softer approach, labeling AI-voiced artist personas rather than banning them outright.
Christian families have plenty of reasons to be uneasy about AI’s creeping presence in entertainment, and music is no exception. Scripture tells us we’re each made in the image of a Creator who fashioned the world with intention, and there’s something worth protecting in a chart that still rewards a person writing a melody and singing it into a microphone. ARIA’s new rule won’t settle every question AI raises for artists, but it’s a reminder that authenticity is still worth drawing a line to defend
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