An AI-generated song on immigrants is killin' it on German charts. But here's the problem

A song about immigrants was among the top 50 on German music charts this month, but there's a twin problem: It is entirely AI-generated, and appears to use terms and expressions considered racist and stereotyping of immigrant communities.

The song in question is “Verknallt in einen Talahon", meaning 'In Love with a Talahon'.

The song made by Josua Waghubinger, who goes by his artist name Butterbro, peaked at 48 this month in Germany, the world's fourth largest music market, before falling. It is still among top 100, having gone down to 83 at the time of writing this.

The song is conceived as a parody, using modern lyrics, and appears to stress on stereotypes about migrants, with beats reminiscent of Schlager pop. Schlager is a pop music genre that was popular in Europe in the 1960s.

Less than a month into its debut,the songhas amassed 3.5 million streams on Spotify and went on to become third on its global viral hits chart. It's up on other streamers like Apple Music and Shazam too. Videos based on the song have gone viral on TikTok.

Why is German viral song Verknallt in einen Talahon seen as racist?

"'Talahon' is a term used variously with pride, with disdain, and also by far-right groups as a slur," said an article in Music Ally. "Very broadly, 'Talahon' describes young men with a migrant background, a specific clothing style, and who are stereotyped as having vulgar, aggressive behaviour, and a lack of respect towards women," it said.

"The song references a Germanised version of the Arabic expression “taeal huna”, meaning “come here” but now commonly used in Germany to describe groups of young men with immigrant backgrounds, often with derogatory overtones," The Guardian report said.

Watch: AI-generated song 'Heart on my sleeve' submitted for Grammy consideration

Sample some lyrics and their racial and stereotypical undertones: The lover in the song is described as having "a Louis belt, a Gucci bag and Air Max trainers” and “smells like an entire perfume shop”.

The woman says her lover is “as sweet as baklava” when he gets angry. Baklava is a Turkish-origin pastry dessert, and Turks are among the largest immigrant groups in Germany.

While speaking to a music podcast Die Klangküche, Waghubinger, a hobby musician and IT professional, said he wanted to make a song "that made fun of overtly macho behaviour with a twinkle in the eye and without discriminating.”

His main motivation was to make it go viral on social media, he said.

The Guaridan quoted music writer Felicia Aghaye as writing that the song’s popularity is "doubly problematic because 'talahon' was firmly established as an insult among young Germans and Austrians against migrants."

"Rightwing groups, for example, use the term to create a bogeyman and stoke Islamophobia and xenophobia,” it quoted Aghaye, who added that the artist appears not to have understood the negative connotations of the term.

Udio, the controversial AI music platform

Udio is a text-to-music generative AI tool that can create music - vocals and instruments - from text prompts. It is facing multiple lawsuits about copright violation by music labels.

Earlier this month, Udio and another AI platform Suno, responded to the lawsuits citing 'fair use'.

“The premise of their case is that musical styles – the characteristic sounds of opera, or jazz, or rap music – are somehow proprietary. Decades of judicial precedent establishes that no company controls a genre or style of music,” it said in a filing at a New York court on August 1.

“Under longstanding doctrine, what Udio has done—use existing sound recordings as data to mine and analyze for the purpose of identifying patterns in the sounds of various musical styles, all to enable people to make their own new creations – is a quintessential ‘fair use’ under copyright law,” it added.

(With inputs from agencies)