Bad Bunny vs. "NostalgIA": when the artist says no to an AI hit

A song in which Bad Bunny raps alongside Daddy Yankee and Justin Bieber sings the hook in Spanish went viral on TikTok this autumn. None of them was involved. The track, "DEMO 5: nostalgIA", was made by Mauricio Bustos, a Chilean producer and songwriter who releases music as FlowGPT. He told Página 7 he put it on YouTube on 4 October and on Spotify on 17 October.

Bad Bunny's verdict was blunt. In a post on his WhatsApp channel, which has 19 million followers, he told anyone who liked the song to leave. "You don't deserve to be my friends," he wrote in Spanish, as translated by BBC Newsbeat. "I don't want them on the tour either." The FADER reported that he also said his new album, Nadie Sabe Lo Que Va a Pasar Mañana, was made to "get rid of people" who enjoy AI versions of him.

How was the song made?

This wasn't a one-prompt generation. In a July 2024 profile, Rest of World reported that Bustos writes lyrics in the style of each artist he imitates, works with human producers on the beats, and records every vocal part himself. He then converts his takes with voice-cloning software. For "NostalgIA" he used community-made voice models on Kits AI, a US company. The name puns on "IA", Spanish for AI.

That process matters for the legal question. The composition and lyrics are Bustos's own work, and he says so: "I have the papers, the song is registered under my name," he told Página 7 (our translation from the Spanish). What he borrowed is the sound of three famous voices. "You don't use their 'voice', you use the timbre. It's a filter, something that hasn't been legislated yet," he said (also our translation).

How far it spread is less clear. BBC Newsbeat counted hundreds of thousands of views on TikTok. Rest of World later reported about half a million TikTok views and nearly a million Spotify streams within a month. Bustos told Página 7 the song had reached the Top 20 in Spain, and that it took off when the Spanish singer Bad Gyal shared the Bad Bunny verse. She deleted the video after Bad Bunny's reaction.

One point of confusion needs clearing up. The BBC noted that the account behind the track has no known link to the AI chatbot platform also called FlowGPT. Rest of World reported that Bustos chose the name as a riff on ChatGPT.

What was taken down, and by whom?

The only account of the removals comes from Bustos. He told Página 7 that Apple Music had removed every FlowGPT song and that Spotify had removed the Spanish version of "NostalgIA", leaving only the Spanglish one. "And the English version, I think its days are numbered," he added (our translation).

He blamed Bad Bunny's label and its influence with the platforms, but offered no evidence. In his view, "legally they shouldn't be able to do anything." No label, platform or artist has said publicly who asked for the removals or under which rule. BBC Newsbeat said it had approached Bad Bunny's label for comment, and Rest of World said his team did not respond to its request.

Spotify later gave Rest of World only a general statement: its "platform rules are clear about content that infringes intellectual property rights or deceives through impersonation." Those rules prohibit "content that impersonates others in order to deceive". That leaves open whether a track openly labelled as an AI demo counts as deception, and Spotify hasn't said which part of the rules it applied.

Why isn't there a clear law?

Because copyright protects works, not voices. In its August 2023 notice of inquiry on AI, the US Copyright Office wrote that artists' voices, likenesses and styles "are not generally protected by copyright law," though copying them may implicate state rights of publicity and unfair-competition law. The notice asks whether Congress should create a federal right, similar to state rights of publicity, for AI-generated material, and whether it should preempt state law. Reply comments, first due on 15 November, were pushed back to 29 November 2023 (and later to 6 December), per the Copyright Office notices.

Harvard Law lecturer Louis Tompros made the same point to Rest of World. Literal copies come down quickly under the DMCA (the US Digital Millennium Copyright Act), but copyright "doesn't have a broader protection for things like styles." He expects some mix of regulation and platform and distributor practice to sort it out in a couple of years, with "chaos" until then.

Bustos's own defence is that this is how the industry already works. "I was hoping Bad Bunny would call us and buy the song, or want to do it," he told Página 7 (our translation; the paper's headline shortened this to "I hoped he'd buy it"). He told Rest of World that composers routinely sing in the style of stars such as Bad Bunny to sell them songs. His answer to the backlash was another track, "Demo #404", which again used Bad Bunny's AI voice and included the line "If this flow is illegal, take me to court."

What we think

Bad Bunny is right, and the process that agreed with him is still a bad one.

He's right because "it's just a demo" doesn't hold up. A songwriter's pitch demo is sent privately to the artist, who can say no. "NostalgIA" went to Spotify, which Bustos told Página 7 earns him money, and it competed for the same listeners as the real Bad Bunny. Being asked first is the bare minimum, and he wasn't.

The process is still bad because nobody could see it. As far as anyone can tell, the removals happened without a public claimant, a named rule or a visible appeal. Bustos's version, that a label phoned the platforms, is unproven. But the platforms haven't offered an alternative, and that silence is what turns a reasonable outcome into an arbitrary one. A copyright notice at least names the work and the claimant. An impersonation removal named nowhere names nothing.

The less obvious loser is every artist smaller than Bad Bunny. He has 19 million people on a WhatsApp channel and a label that platforms answer. A mid-sized reggaeton artist whose voice is cloned tomorrow has neither, and no copyright claim either, since the song belongs to whoever wrote it. Protection that depends on being famous isn't a rule. That is why the Copyright Office's question about a federal voice right matters more to working musicians than to stars.

Meanwhile the incentives favour cloners. A viral clone earns streams before anyone acts, and the controversy works as promotion, which is the whole point of "Demo #404". Two fixes would help now, without waiting for Congress: platforms should say why AI-voice tracks are removed and who asked, and distributors should require proof of consent before any upload that names or clones a real artist's voice. Bustos himself said artists deserve royalties for their legacy. A consent-and-licence system would turn that into money for the artists, not a takedown race.

Sources

• BBC Newsbeat, Bad Bunny not happy about AI track using his voice (8 Nov 2023)
• The FADER, Bad Bunny really doesn't like that viral deepfaked AI song (8 Nov 2023)
• Página 7, Chileno creador de FlowGPT ante polémica de Bad Bunny por canción con IA: "Esperaba que la comprara" (8 Nov 2023, in Spanish; quotes are our translation)
• Rest of World, The AI artist who used Bad Bunny's voice — and shot to fame (9 Jul 2024)
• Spotify, Platform Rules
• U.S. Copyright Office, Artificial Intelligence and Copyright, notice of inquiry (Federal Register, 30 Aug 2023)