"Heart on My Sleeve", three and a half years on: the fake Drake track that set the terms for AI music

On 4 April 2023 an anonymous producer calling himself Ghostwriter released "Heart on My Sleeve", a song whose vocals had been run through AI voice models to sound like Drake and the Weeknd. It took off on TikTok over a weekend in mid-April. By the afternoon of 17 April, when it was pulled, it had 600,000 Spotify streams, 15 million TikTok views and 275,000 YouTube views.

Three and a half years later, most of the arguments about AI and music still come back to that track. This is a look at what happened, what Ghostwriter said afterwards, and what actually changed.

What happened in April 2023?

The song wasn't machine-written. Ghostwriter said in a TikTok comment that he wrote it and then swapped his own voice for Drake's, and in another that he had been a ghostwriter for years and "got paid close to nothing just for major labels to profit". The intro carried Metro Boomin's producer tag.

By the morning of 18 April the track was gone from Spotify, Apple Music, SoundCloud, Amazon, YouTube and Tidal. Universal Music Group, which represents both artists, put out a statement asking whether the industry wanted to be on the side of "artists, fans and human creative expression" or of "deep fakes, fraud and denying artists their due compensation". UMG declined to say whether it had sent formal takedown requests to the streaming services.

How do you take down a song nobody owns?

This is the detail that matters most now. "Heart on My Sleeve" copied no recording in UMG's catalogue, so there was no obvious copyright to claim. YouTube said it removed the video after "a valid copyright notification for a sample included in the video", and The Verge was told that the sample in question was the Metro Boomin tag. The same report said UMG then sent URL-by-URL takedowns for re-uploads, because it couldn't put a song it didn't own into Content ID.

So the most famous AI deepfake in music was removed using an ordinary sample claim. The voices, which were the whole point of the song, had no legal hook of their own.

What did Ghostwriter say afterwards?

That autumn he posted a second song, "Whiplash", to TikTok with AI voices of 21 Savage and Travis Scott, and his team submitted "Heart on My Sleeve" for Song of the Year and Best Rap Song. In a Billboard cover story in October 2023, he said of the first song, "It is definitely my songwriting, my production and my voice." His anonymous manager said they had not been in contact with Drake, the Weeknd, Travis Scott or 21 Savage. The manager also said they would not release on streaming platforms again "without getting the artists on board", called the first release "an experiment to prove the market was there", and answered the consent question by saying Spotify "wouldn't exist without Napster". The pair's pitch was that artists should license their voices: one imagined an artist taking 50% of the revenue, with permissions that block uses such as hate speech or politics.

The Grammy story is easy to get wrong. The Recording Academy's rules, updated in June 2023, say that only human creators can be nominated, that a work with no human authorship is ineligible, and that a work with AI elements is eligible only if the human part is "meaningful and more than de minimis" and relevant to the category. The AI portion itself can't win. CEO Harvey Mason Jr. told the New York Times the song was "absolutely eligible" for the songwriting categories, then corrected himself on Instagram: the AI version was not eligible because "the vocals were not legally obtained", they weren't cleared by the label or artists, and the song wasn't commercially available.

According to Billboard, Ghostwriter's team then uploaded a version with no AI voice filters on 8 September, and a Recording Academy representative confirmed that version would be on the ballot. It didn't get further than that: it is not among the Song of the Year nominees, and Best Rap Song went to Killer Mike's "Scientists & Engineers". So the version with AI voices was never eligible, and the AI-free version that was didn't win.

In April 2024 a press release rebranded him as GHOST with a new single, "MR. X!". In it he says he never meant to court controversy and only emulates artists he admires. We found no later interviews.

What changed after "Heart on My Sleeve"?

• August 2023: YouTube and UMG launched a Music AI Incubator with a working group of UMG artists, songwriters and producers.
• March 2024: Tennessee signed the ELVIS Act, adding voice to the state's protection against misuse by AI.
• April 2024: Drake himself posted "Taylor Made Freestyle" with AI voices resembling Tupac Shakur and Snoop Dogg. Tupac's estate sent a cease-and-desist calling the record "a flagrant violation of Tupac's publicity and the estate's legal rights", and by 26 April it was gone from his social channels.
• June 2024: UMG, Sony and Warner, through the RIAA, sued Udio and Suno for copyright infringement.
• September 2025: Spotify adopted a rule that vocal impersonation is allowed only when the impersonated artist has authorised it.
• October 2025: UMG settled with Udio and agreed a licensed platform trained on "authorized and licensed music", with creations kept in a walled garden in the meantime. In May 2026 details emerged of the resulting app, Starstruck, where fans make tracks with opted-in artists' music and voices and the original rights holders own the results (our take).
• November 2025: Warner partnered with Suno, promising new experiences built on the names, likenesses and voices of Warner artists who opt in.
• September 2026: Suno launched v6, developed with Warner, BMG and Believe (our analysis). UMG and ElevenLabs announced a deal for a fan platform that will include "personalized vocal experiences" (our coverage). On 30 September, Sen. Ted Cruz blocked a fast-track vote on the federal NO FAKES Act, which would create a right over your own voice (what that means).
• October 2026: Sony Music said it had asked platforms to remove more than 260,000 AI deepfakes imitating its artists (why indies can't match that). Platforms now label AI music in different ways.

What we think

Ghostwriter lost the argument and won the forecast. His pitch to Billboard was that artists should license their voices for a share of the revenue, with rules on how the voice can be used. That is close to a description of Starstruck, Suno's opt-in plans and the UMG–ElevenLabs deal. What he got wrong was who would be paid. He framed the project as a protest by underpaid songwriters. The licensed products pay the rights holders of the original artist and song; on Starstruck, those rights holders own the generated recordings, and as we noted at the time, the opt-in usually runs through the label and publisher rather than the artist personally. Someone writing a new song with a licensed voice in one of these apps is a paying customer, not a credited writer. The deal Ghostwriter wanted for writers like him is the one nobody has offered.

The takedown is the more lasting lesson. In 2023 the only lever was a copyright claim on a producer tag. Three and a half years later, the levers are still mostly private: Spotify's authorisation rule, label–platform deals, takedown programmes run by companies with staff. The law that would give everyone the same right over their voice is stuck. A rule enforced by contract protects people with contracts. Drake's AI Tupac track shows the norm has changed, but it came down within a week of a letter from an estate with a lawyer and a publicity claim. An independent singer cloned tomorrow still has a report form.

The Grammy episode fits the same pattern. The Academy's line, credit for the human part and nothing for the AI part, is sensible. But the AI version was ruled out over clearance and availability, not artistry, and those are questions about permission. The rules being written are about who signs off, more than what AI is allowed to do.

Sources

• The Verge, What's really going on with 'Ghostwriter' and the AI Drake song? (18 Apr 2023)
• The Verge, AI Drake just set an impossible legal trap for Google (19 Apr 2023)
• The Guardian, AI song featuring fake Drake and Weeknd vocals pulled from streaming services (18 Apr 2023)
• NBC News, Viral AI-powered Drake and The Weeknd song is removed from streaming services (18 Apr 2023)
• Music Business Worldwide, AI music that contains 'no human authorship' won't be eligible for a Grammy Award (19 Jun 2023)
• The FADER, Recording Academy CEO says deepfaked Drake/The Weeknd song is not eligible for a Grammy (8 Sep 2023)
• Billboard, Ghostwriter, the Mastermind Behind the Viral Drake AI Song, Speaks For the First Time (11 Oct 2023)
• The FADER, Ghostwriter's vision of music is all machine, no heart (20 Oct 2023)
• Recording Academy, 2024 GRAMMY Awards winners and nominees
• Audible Treats, GHOST (formerly Ghostwriter977) press release (10 Apr 2024)
• YouTube, An artist-centric approach to AI innovation (21 Aug 2023)
• Office of the Governor of Tennessee, Gov. Lee signs ELVIS Act into law (21 Mar 2024)
• CBC Music, Drake receives cease-and-desist letter from Tupac Shakur's estate over AI diss track (24 Apr 2024)
• Music Business Worldwide, Udio CEO Andrew Sanchez on walled gardens in AI music
• Spotify, Spotify strengthens AI protections (25 Sep 2025)
• UMG and Udio press release via Record of the Day, Udio's first strategic agreements for new licensed AI music creation platform (Oct 2025)
• Suno, A new chapter in music creation (25 Nov 2025)
• Music Ally, Udio reveals details of its licensed AI-music app Starstruck (22 May 2026)
• Suno, Introducing v6 (9 Sep 2026)
• ElevenLabs, Universal Music Group and ElevenLabs announce multi-year strategic agreement (10 Sep 2026)
• Raw Story, Ted Cruz torpedoes fellow Republican's signature bill on the Senate floor (30 Sep 2026)
• Music Business Worldwide, Sony Music has now asked platforms to remove more than 260,000 AI deepfakes (5 Oct 2026)