With how fast-paced the entertainment industry is today, here are 5 viral and popular songs you didn’t know were made with AI.
From soulful ballads to genre-bending covers, AI-generated songs are quietly taking over streaming platforms and social media feeds, often leaving listeners unaware that no human artist was directly behind the microphone.
As difficult as it may seem to believe, some of the most talked-about tracks of the past year were not made by the artists you thought you were listening to. Here are five songs that went viral before most people realised AI was behind them.
“Walk My Walk” — Breaking Rust
Arguably one of the biggest AI songs to date, Breaking Rust made headlines by debuting at number 9 on the Billboard Emerging Artists chart, and again when it hit number 1 on the Country Digital Song Sales chart, making it the first fully AI-generated act to reach the top of a Billboard chart. The project is backed by Hallwood Media, a label that has made a deliberate bet on AI artists as the next frontier of the music business.
What makes this remarkable is the genre in focus, Country music is built on authenticity, on heartbreak that feels lived-in, on voices that carry dust and gravel and years. And yet listeners streamed “Walk My Walk” and felt exactly that. Nobody raised a flag. Nobody noticed anything was off. That, more than the chart position, is the real headline: AI had learned to sound like it had a soul.
Imbattables – Crystalo
Who sang Imbattables (France’s 2026 World Cup song)?
Arguably, one of the most viral songs surrounding the 2026 FIFA World Cup to date is Imbattables by French Rapper Crystalo, for the France National Team. “Imbattables,” meaning “Unbeatable,” is a three-minute rap track that name-checks the entire French national squad, from Kylian Mbappé to Michael Olise to Ousmane Dembélé, building to the rallying cry that France’s two World Cup stars are not enough and that a third must follow.
Within a short period of time, the song has already amassed over ten million streams across YouTube, Spotify, and TikTok, not even accounting for fan-created remixes and covers, and a post featuring the song on X garnered over three million views in the United Kingdom alone.
Numerous online commentators raised concerns about the extensive use of artificial intelligence in its production, though details regarding the specific AI tools used remain scarce.
“Celebrate Me” — IngaRose
IngaRose has amassed over 220,000 TikTok followers, more than 230,000 Instagram followers, a YouTube channel with 82,000 subscribers, and multiple albums on Spotify. She also does not exist. IngaRose is not believed to be a real performer, with reports linking the project to South Carolina producer Dallas Little.
The persona’s Instagram bio gives it away if you look closely enough, describing songs with “human-written lyrics” that are “refined using Suno”, an AI music generation platform.
“Celebrate Me” currently sits atop the iTunes charts in the United States, the United Kingdom, France, Canada, and New Zealand. The song appeared to gain popularity on TikTok, where it has been used as a sound in nearly 300,000 videos, with many of the most-liked videos praising the lyrics as inspirational
“Papaoutai” (Afro Soul Cover) — mikeeysmind and Chill77
Stromae’s “Papaoutai” is already one of the most emotionally powerful songs in modern French music, a haunting meditation on absent fathers that hit millions of people deeply when it first came out in 2013.
So when a gospel-inflected, choir-drenched Afro Soul reimagining of it started sweeping across TikTok in early 2026, people were moved all over again. The catch? Every voice you heard was generated by AI.
“Papaoutai (Afro Soul)” was released through Swedish label Unjaps AB on December 20, 2025, and after being uploaded to YouTube on January 9, 2026, it went viral almost immediately. It became one of the most viral tracks of early 2026.
“Let Me Be” — The Second Voice
This is arguably the most human story on this list, and that is exactly what makes it so fascinating. Elvin Cena is a 21-year-old Rwandan-born artist based in France, a real musician with a real catalogue who has been grinding since 2020. He originally recorded “Let Me Be” in a studio; the melody was his, the lyrics were his, but he was unhappy with how it turned out and shelved it.
Months later, he fed the concept into an AI tool, rebuilt it, and uploaded the result to a brand new channel he called “The Second Voice.” His reasoning was deliberate: he did not want an AI song attached to his own name as an artist.
The song was uploaded on a new channel called “The Second Voice” on February 8, 2026, and he left it alone. What happened next caught everyone off guard. The amapiano-inspired track racked up over 13 million combined YouTube views, spread quickly on TikTok, and climbed charts in countries across Europe and Africa.
What is next for Music with AI?
Across these five songs, a pattern emerges. Some of these tracks are the work of real artists using AI as a production tool, like Elvin Cena, who brought genuine melody and lyrics to the table. Others are fully fabricated personas with no human performer behind them at all.
One thing is clear: AI is here to stay, even in music. Artists like Wizkid and Asake and producers like Diplo have acknowledged this.
Wizkid, in a recent interview with Apple Music in 2025, revealed that he believes AI will play a significant role in the years ahead. “AI is the future, whether you use it to enhance your craft or not,” he said.
Diplo, in an interview with Wall, revealed, “There’s no fighting AI. You have to just work your best to be the best at it right now. You’re wasting your time. You’re wasting a year being like ‘ahh’ because everybody else is going to just use it and not give a fuck what you think.”
It is an open-ended situation because there is this lingering concern of how the new era of music might phase out creatives, whilst others believe that this era will help creatives instead.
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With how fast-paced the entertainment industry is today, here are 5 viral and popular songs you didn’t know were made with AI.
The post Top 5 viral and popular songs you didn’t know were made with AI appeared first on NotjustOk. Read More
