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Did AI secretly write the biggest song of the year? · The Front

• 0:07
  Speaker 1: From The Australian, this is the weekend edition of The Front.
• 0:10
  Speaker 1: I'm Claire Harvey. French DJ Florent Huguel has a monster
• 0:17
  Speaker 1: global hit on his hands, and he's frantically trying to
• 0:20
  Speaker 1: refute claims the whole thing came from artificial intelligence. And
• 0:25
  Speaker 1: we're breaking a story on The Front today. Huguel's work
• 0:28
  Speaker 1: will be considered for the Grammys, despite the cries of
• 0:31
  Speaker 1: AI slobs. Today, our audio lead Jasper Leek joins me
• 0:35
  Speaker 1: to peel back the layers from the song Move Into
• 0:38
  Speaker 1: The Sun to work out what's real and what's audacious spin.
• 0:45
  Speaker 1: All right.
• 0:47
  Speaker 2: Hello.
• 0:47
  Speaker 3: Hello.
• 0:49
  Speaker 1: Move Into The Sun is the biggest song in the
• 0:51
  Speaker 1: world in 2026. I don't know about you, Jasper, but
• 0:53
  Speaker 1: I'm hearing it all over social media. Belgian aerobics instructors
• 0:58
  Speaker 1: coordinating workouts to this song. people showing off outfit changes.
• 1:03
  Speaker 1: Are you hearing it?
• 1:04
  Speaker 2: Look, I'm not really tapped into the sort of Ibiza,
• 1:07
  Speaker 2: Mykonos kind of party world as much as I maybe
• 1:10
  Speaker 2: would like to be. But yeah, I'm under the impression
• 1:12
  Speaker 2: that it is a huge song. It did go to
• 1:15
  Speaker 2: number one on Billboard's dance charts, and it has been
• 1:17
  Speaker 2: playlisted around the world in international radio charts as well.
• 1:21
  Speaker 4: Excuse me, my man, what do you do for a living?
• 1:23
  Speaker 4: I make the girls dance.
• 1:24
  Speaker 3: Yeah, how?
• 1:26
  Speaker 1: It's credited to a French DJ called Ugel, who, you know,
• 1:31
  Speaker 1: he's a cool guy. Like he's got the word passionate
• 1:33
  Speaker 1: tattooed on his neck, which is kind of hilarious. He's
• 1:37
  Speaker 1: always surrounded in the DJ booth by gorgeous girls dancing,
• 1:40
  Speaker 1: often actually looking like they're not enjoying it that much,
• 1:42
  Speaker 1: but they're very beautiful. So he's living the French DJ dream.
• 1:46
  Speaker 1: And he created this song after being inspired by something
• 1:51
  Speaker 1: that he'd heard apparently on the radio or out and
• 1:54
  Speaker 1: about in his kind of French DJ cool guy world.
• 1:57
  Speaker 1: That song that he used as inspiration was credited to
• 2:01
  Speaker 1: a producer called Imel Angel or Imel Angel. What do
• 2:04
  Speaker 1: we know about Imel Angel?
• 2:06
  Speaker 2: Imel Angel is a Hungarian-born, UK-based reiki healer who is.
• 2:12
  Speaker 1: Famous for dropping a great beat.
• 2:14
  Speaker 4: Totally.
• 2:14
  Speaker 1: Totally.
• 2:15
  Speaker 2: The way that she makes music is that she uses Suno,
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  Speaker 2: which is the world's biggest AI music generator. So this
• 2:21
  Speaker 2: is the platform you might have seen where people can
• 2:23
  Speaker 2: sit to music, the family group chats, which there's some
• 2:25
  Speaker 2: very funny examples of this on social media where.
• 2:43
  Speaker 1: A family argument on a group chat is set to
• 2:45
  Speaker 1: music with voices singing the lyrics or singing the words.
• 2:49
  Speaker 3: Mom, what are we having for lunch?
• 2:51
  Speaker 2: Food.
• 2:51
  Speaker 4: I want sushi. Can we get sushi? Do you want sushi?
• 2:57
  Speaker 4: Let's go get sushi, please.
• 3:01
  Speaker 1: Imel Angel used Suno to create a song called I'm
• 3:04
  Speaker 1: Moving to the Sun. In that song, there's a woman singing,
• 3:09
  Speaker 1: but that woman doesn't really exist.
• 3:11
  Speaker 2: Does she? This is the tricky thing about Suno. It's
• 3:14
  Speaker 2: really hard to distinguish just how much of what you're
• 3:17
  Speaker 2: listening to is human-made and just how much of what
• 3:19
  Speaker 2: you're listening to is made by the machine. So I've
• 3:22
  Speaker 2: read online that Imel Angel wrote her own lyrics and
• 3:26
  Speaker 2: sang those lyrics and fed that into Suno and then
• 3:29
  Speaker 2: had Suno take care of the production. That is a
• 3:31
  Speaker 2: step beyond how a lot of people would use Suno.
• 3:34
  Speaker 2: You can create a Suno song with as little as
• 3:36
  Speaker 2: a five-second text prompt. So she has apparently... recorded some
• 3:40
  Speaker 2: vocals and then fed those into Suno and then Suno
• 3:44
  Speaker 2: has spat out a song that was called I'm Moving
• 3:47
  Speaker 2: to the Sun.
• 3:54
  Speaker 1: And the voice that's singing in this piece of music
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  Speaker 1: sounds to me like a black woman. Imel Angel is white.
• 4:02
  Speaker 1: That's intriguing and interesting and the singer kind of scats
• 4:05
  Speaker 1: at one.
• 4:06
  Speaker 2: Point, doesn't she? Yes. So we would call it scouting.
• 4:12
  Speaker 2: Other people would call it a vocal chop. And it's
• 4:14
  Speaker 2: actually this specific vocal chop that becomes really important in
• 4:17
  Speaker 2: our timeline with music. Ugel's version of Move Into The Sun.
• 4:21
  Speaker 4: Right.
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  Speaker 1: So then suddenly Ugel releases a version of the song
• 4:25
  Speaker 1: and it's called Move Into The Sun with no G. Yes.
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  Speaker 4: It's French.
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  Speaker 2: And he cuts the I'm.
• 4:31
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
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  Speaker 1: He's cool. He's a cool guy.
• 4:32
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
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  Speaker 1: And singing and scatting on this song, Vocal Chopping, is
• 4:37
  Speaker 1: an American kind of house music legend called Ultra Nete.
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  Speaker 1: Can you sing it with me? She's a woman of
• 4:46
  Speaker 1: a certain age. She's super glamorous. She's very cool. And
• 4:50
  Speaker 1: she's giving what sounds like a pretty amazing performance. But
• 4:53
  Speaker 1: it's very similar to what was in this original Suno song.
• 4:57
  Speaker 1: But it's Ugel's version that has gone ballistic. It is
• 5:00
  Speaker 1: the one that is topping the Billboard charts. It is
• 5:02
  Speaker 1: absolutely huge. And he credits Ultronate and Imel Angel as
• 5:07
  Speaker 1: co-creators of this song. It takes off and then a
• 5:11
  Speaker 1: controversy arises where people start asking, hang on, is this
• 5:14
  Speaker 1: song AI? Because they're detecting a similarity with the original
• 5:18
  Speaker 1: piece of music. And Ugel then makes a video for
• 5:21
  Speaker 1: social media where he shows his digital workspace and shows
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  Speaker 1: how he created the song to try and prove that
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  Speaker 1: it is, as he says, handmade or human made.
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  Speaker 2: Hmm.
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  Speaker 3: It is one of the most controversial songs, and a
• 5:35
  Speaker 3: lot of people in the message were like, it was
• 5:36
  Speaker 3: made with AI, it was made with AI, it's 100% AI, da-da-dee-da-da-da.
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  Speaker 3: So today, I'm going to take you through the song.
• 5:42
  Speaker 3: We're going to do a full breakdown of the song,
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  Speaker 3: and we're going to see what is AI, what is not.
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  Speaker 1: You work in this kind of workspace all the time.
• 5:48
  Speaker 1: This is what you do as a producer and audio expert.
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  Speaker 1: What did you think of what Ugel is showing us
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  Speaker 1: here and what he is claiming to have done to
• 5:57
  Speaker 1: this song?
• 5:58
  Speaker 2: A high level of audacity, and.
• 6:02
  Speaker 2: Zero evidence of songwriting. In Male Angels, I Move Into
• 6:05
  Speaker 2: The Sun and Ugel's Move Into The Sun are the
• 6:08
  Speaker 2: same piece. They're both built on a tempo of 126.5 BPM.
• 6:12
  Speaker 2: They share the exact same eight-bar chord progression. There's four
• 6:15
  Speaker 2: bars of F minor, two bars of D-flat major, two
• 6:18
  Speaker 2: bars of B-flat minor. Lyrically, it's the same. Ugel, though,
• 6:22
  Speaker 2: claims that by switching out Suno's drums with his own drums,
• 6:27
  Speaker 2: by switching out the Suno synths with his own synths,
• 6:31
  Speaker 2: and switching out Imel Angel's vocal with Ultra Nete's vocal,
• 6:35
  Speaker 2: he is saying, but look, this is my song. Like
• 6:37
  Speaker 2: I made this song. And it's like, well, you reprogram
• 6:39
  Speaker 2: that song, but you didn't write the song. To his credit,
• 6:43
  Speaker 2: he put Imel Angel's name alongside his own and Ultra
• 6:47
  Speaker 2: Nete's in the credits. But Imel Angel is not a
• 6:50
  Speaker 2: big name in the dance music world. And so naturally
• 6:54
  Speaker 2: people were curious about who she was and maybe what
• 6:58
  Speaker 2: other songs that she's created. And it didn't take them
• 7:00
  Speaker 2: very long. to find a song with a very similar
• 7:03
  Speaker 2: name that sounded a hell of a lot like the
• 7:05
  Speaker 2: Who Girls song online. And that's when the sort of
• 7:09
  Speaker 2: the cries of AI slot started. This song is AI.
• 7:13
  Speaker 2: It's made by this old Hungarian lady. I'm serious because
• 7:15
  Speaker 2: it's Hugh Jell, who's one of the biggest names in
• 7:17
  Speaker 2: dance music, the singer Altra and Ate, and someone called.
• 7:21
  Speaker 1: Ugel and Ultranete and Imel Angel are on social media
• 7:26
  Speaker 1: posting videos of themselves performing live at Ugel gigs. So,
• 7:30
  Speaker 1: you know, places like that. But the whole point is
• 7:33
  Speaker 1: to show that these are real human beings. And there's
• 7:36
  Speaker 1: video of Ultranete singing along to Ugel. But he's just
• 7:41
  Speaker 1: kind of moving the sliders and doing the things that
• 7:43
  Speaker 1: DJs do. Like, is any of this real?
• 7:45
  Speaker 4: Exactly.
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  Speaker 2: Exactly.
• 7:47
  Speaker 3: Are you really spinning or is there just a few
• 7:48
  Speaker 3: buttons like you just click play? You would figure it out.
• 7:51
  Speaker 4: Yeah, okay.
• 7:53
  Speaker 2: If the aim of those clips is to convince people
• 7:55
  Speaker 2: that it's human-made, he's not convincing me. In terms of
• 7:58
  Speaker 2: what's happening musically, yeah, it looks like he hits play
• 8:01
  Speaker 2: on a mixer and he's kind of doing this. And alternate, yes,
• 8:06
  Speaker 2: she's there and she's singing into a wireless microphone. How
• 8:10
  Speaker 2: much of what we're hearing is really her? How much
• 8:12
  Speaker 2: of it is on track? I would argue not much.
• 8:16
  Speaker 2: And It's a little bit like the video that Ugel
• 8:20
  Speaker 2: posted on social media, stepping viewers through his production. For him,
• 8:24
  Speaker 2: that was definitive proof that his version of the song
• 8:26
  Speaker 2: is a human-made production. Whereas I'm sort of looking at
• 8:29
  Speaker 2: it and it's like, you're actually proving the opposite. You're
• 8:32
  Speaker 2: really proving that from a songwriting perspective, you didn't change anything.
• 8:35
  Speaker 2: You just created a new master.
• 8:37
  Speaker 1: When he talks us through what he's seeing on his workspace.
• 8:40
  Speaker 4: There is some spliced of some other sample pack. basically
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  Speaker 4: drums that like every producer are using, nothing special.
• 8:52
  Speaker 1: He's dragging in drums and synths and monkey scream at
• 8:55
  Speaker 1: one point and various things. And he says at one point,
• 8:57
  Speaker 1: this is a string to bring that tension of house music.
• 9:01
  Speaker 4: Extra little string for the tension and the house music feeling.
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  Speaker 4: So no AI in this song.
• 9:10
  Speaker 1: And it's all very normal. And this is what producers do.
• 9:13
  Speaker 1: 30 years ago, a musician might look at that and
• 9:17
  Speaker 1: be horrified because none of these are real instruments being
• 9:20
  Speaker 1: played in Hugel's studio. He's taking pre-recorded things, he's maybe
• 9:25
  Speaker 1: changing the time on them or changing the pitch and
• 9:28
  Speaker 1: putting them into his session. So now he's got a
• 9:32
  Speaker 1: new input, which is an AI song that he heard
• 9:35
  Speaker 1: that now he's replicating. Where do we draw the line?
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  Speaker 1: And is this a matter of us getting used to
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  Speaker 1: AI being a new input? That seems to be what
• 9:43
  Speaker 1: he's arguing. It's like, well, I'm dragging all this stuff in.
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  Speaker 1: No one's angry that I didn't play this drum myself.
• 9:49
  Speaker 2: Well, just two things. He's not changing anything in terms
• 9:52
  Speaker 2: of pitch. He's not changing anything in terms of time.
• 9:55
  Speaker 2: He's actually just taking Layer A and replacing it with
• 9:58
  Speaker 2: his own version of Layer A. And he kind of
• 10:01
  Speaker 2: does that with the drums and he does that with
• 10:02
  Speaker 2: the bass line and he does that with the chords.
• 10:05
  Speaker 2: I found it really interesting reading the comments on that
• 10:08
  Speaker 2: video that he's posted and defenders of Huguel are saying,
• 10:12
  Speaker 2: who cares? Like this is the best song I've, you know,
• 10:15
  Speaker 2: this song makes me feel alive. They're happy to see
• 10:17
  Speaker 2: him get the kudos and They're happy for him and
• 10:20
  Speaker 2: his victory lap at the moment. Making music doesn't have
• 10:23
  Speaker 2: to be a path of most resistance experience. Why not
• 10:26
  Speaker 2: leverage the incredible capabilities of these digital audio workstations that
• 10:30
  Speaker 2: are around at the moment, like Ableton or Logic or
• 10:32
  Speaker 2: Pro Tools or whatever? But I just think that it
• 10:36
  Speaker 2: is going a step too far if you then call
• 10:40
  Speaker 2: a recreated work your own work.
• 10:42
  Speaker 1: Well, Ugel wants to have his ghetto and eat it too,
• 10:45
  Speaker 1: doesn't he? Because he wants the recognition of being considered
• 10:49
  Speaker 1: for a Grammy. So that's why he was making this video.
• 10:52
  Speaker 1: The Grammys have an expectation that AI can be used,
• 10:55
  Speaker 1: but it has to be a contribution to essentially human work.
• 10:58
  Speaker 2: Yes, that's right.
• 10:59
  Speaker 1: So it's not enough for Ugel to have just made
• 11:02
  Speaker 1: an incredibly cool song that everybody wants to dance to.
• 11:05
  Speaker 1: He wants industry recognition. You know, he wants a Grammy. Yeah.
• 11:10
  Speaker 1: Is that too much? Is that the problem?
• 11:11
  Speaker 2: Yes, it is the problem because if you listen to
• 11:14
  Speaker 2: the original and if you listen to his, they are
• 11:16
  Speaker 2: the same thing.
• 11:17
  Speaker 1: One of the reasons to care about this is that
• 11:20
  Speaker 1: is it an existential threat to actually human-made music? You know,
• 11:23
  Speaker 1: if we let Ugel have a Grammy and we let
• 11:27
  Speaker 1: him go to the top of the charts, which is
• 11:28
  Speaker 1: happening anyway, although the Australian charts have ruled out AI
• 11:32
  Speaker 1: music at all, so you're not allowed to, you can't
• 11:35
  Speaker 1: be charting as an artist in Australia if your song
• 11:37
  Speaker 1: is made by AI. It's a decision made by the
• 11:39
  Speaker 1: Recording Industry Association. Is this potentially going to destroy music
• 11:46
  Speaker 1: as a career and as an art form?
• 11:47
  Speaker 2: I don't think so. Watching his breakdown of how he
• 11:51
  Speaker 2: made his version of Move Into The Sun, it does
• 11:54
  Speaker 2: feel a little bit like a sort of dystopian fever dream.
• 11:58
  Speaker 2: You know, it's like I'm watching this DJ recreate a
• 12:03
  Speaker 2: song that was made by A.I., in his own computer
• 12:06
  Speaker 2: with his own sort of set of virtual instruments. I
• 12:09
  Speaker 2: watched that and think, wow, this is where we've landed.
• 12:14
  Speaker 2: But I think that Ugal represents a certain part of
• 12:19
  Speaker 2: the music industry that are fine with that. I think
• 12:22
  Speaker 2: they're more concerned with looking good, being at the right parties.
• 12:26
  Speaker 2: That sort of music celebrates a type of hedonism that
• 12:29
  Speaker 2: is like, you know, whatever, that's fine. I'd have no
• 12:34
  Speaker 2: issue celebrating with that music existing. I think that the
• 12:37
  Speaker 2: standards or the expectations that listeners put on their producers
• 12:42
  Speaker 2: are very different to the ones that you would find
• 12:44
  Speaker 2: in other genres. I think it's an important time for
• 12:48
  Speaker 2: ARIA domestically or for the Recording Academy in America to
• 12:52
  Speaker 2: uphold those standards and say, look, you can use AI,
• 12:55
  Speaker 2: but like you said, it has to be in service
• 12:58
  Speaker 2: to human creativity. It can't replace it. Human authorship has
• 13:01
  Speaker 2: to be the primary driver when it comes to recorded
• 13:05
  Speaker 2: human works.
• 13:10
  Speaker 1: We asked the Recording Academy if Move Into the Sun
• 13:12
  Speaker 1: will be eligible for the Grammys, and what we found
• 13:14
  Speaker 1: out is really interesting. The song itself won't be eligible
• 13:19
  Speaker 1: in any of the best song categories, and that's because
• 13:22
  Speaker 1: of the inclusion of the samples from Imel Angel's original work.
• 13:27
  Speaker 1: But Ugel and Ultranete will be eligible for Grammys in
• 13:32
  Speaker 1: the performance categories for this same song. Jasper Leake is
• 13:43
  Speaker 1: the Australian's audio lead. Thanks for listening to The Front
• 13:46
  Speaker 1: this week. I'm Clare Harvey. Our team also includes Kristen Amiet,
• 13:50
  Speaker 1: Liat Samaglou, Tiffany Dimak and Joshua Burton.