Thievery or Innovation? The Music Industry Grapples With A.I.

The comedian Bill Stiteler didn’t follow a conventional path to pop music stardom. In fact, he doesn’t really see himself as a musician at all.

A couple of years ago, Stiteler began creating jokey “realistic walk-up songs” for Major League Baseball players using Suno, an artificial intelligence music generator. The clips helped boost his follower count on Instagram. But his first certifiable hit came when he applied the same irreverent tone to travel and asked Suno to compose a song about a vacation trip.

His A.I.-assisted ode to an island, The Puerto Rico Song, has nearly 20 million Spotify streams, millions of views on YouTube and a licensing deal that earns him royalties (he won’t disclose dollar amounts). In June, Puerto Rico’s tourism board flew him out to record a music video. “It’s a wild place to vacation,” his A.I. singer belts. “Slot machines in the bus station.”

Stiteler, 37, has produced dozens of ticklish A.I. ditties about cities, often obscure ones (Altoona, Pa; Morgantown, W.Va; Manchester, N.H.) He writes the lyrics for what he calls his “pseudomusic”; Suno does the rest. “I’m not an artist,” he said. “I’m a fartist.”

Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2026/08/29/business/dealbook/ai-generated-music.html