Key takeaways from our discussion on avatar rapper FN Meka

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A recap of our latest Thoughtful Rant™

Last Friday, the Water & Music community gathered together for a Thoughtful Rant. In case you haven’t attended one of these sessions before, these are ad hoc events are designed for us to air our feelings on any particularly controversial or significant events within the music industry, in an informal, off record manner.

This time, we were discussing controversial avatar artist FN Meka, a self-described “AI rapper” who was dropped by his label, Capitol Records, after a storm of controversy over the racist nature of the rapper’s characterization and lyrics.

Here are some key themes that emerged from our discussion:

FN Meka is not AI

Firstly, we were keen to stress that FN Meka is in no way an actual “AI” rapper. While it’s unclear how much of FN Meka’s music was algorithmically generated, his music and appearance were all created by humans, some of whom are still waiting to be paid for their involvement in the project. We agreed that, at a push, it would be more accurate to describe FN Meka as an avatar artist.

For those of us who are legitimately building creative AI projects, it’s discouraging to see artificial intelligence being used as little more than a marketing ploy. In fact, as we went on to discuss, the FN Meka debacle has more resonance from a branding/ethics perspective, than it does as a purely technological case study.

FN Meka is barely an artist

While discussing the concept behind FN Meka, some community members who had been familiar with the project from its inception shared that the project had always been an advertising ploy, rather than a genuine musical project. Some of us drew similarities between FN Meka and Kingship, the BAYC “supergroup” who released an M&Ms collaboration before they released music (and who, coincidentally, are signed to FN Meka’s ex-label, Capitol). In a similar vein, we shared posts from FN Meka’s Instagram page, which had several posts mimicking brand partnerships, including portraying the rapper as a GQ cover star, and (in one particularly offensive example), eating fast food from DoorDash while incarcerated.

Despite these engagement farming tactics, several of us pointed out how strikingly low FN Meka’s social media engagement is. Despite having over 10M Instagram followers, many of FN Meka’s posts had only a handful of comments, most of them directing hate at the project.

We contrasted this frosty reception from fans to the online presence of Lil Miquela, another avatar artist. Despite attracting her fair share of brand partnerships, Lil Miquela has grown a genuine fanbase on social media — in part, because she plays with social media to tell genuinely compelling stories, as well as to provide ironic commentary on influencer culture and the role of technology in the celebrity industry. Many of us noted that there seemed to be no attempt at any kind of storytelling in the FN Meka project. Instead, the project relied on rehashing gross stereotypes and tired TikTok trends, all while blatantly flaunting its consumerism.

AI and avatar artist projects must be careful not to replicate human biases

While the pitfalls of the FN Meka project are (more than likely) down to human bias rather than algorithmic error, we discussed how avatar artists (whether AI-powered or otherwise) present a particular ethical quandary to the music industry — when the nuances of humanity are removed, how do we avoid falling into stereotypes? Several of us made the dystopian observation that labels may (someday) prefer dealing with virtual artists, rather than dealing with the complexities of human artists, with potentially disastrous implications for artist welfare. As AI tools like DALL-E become increasingly popular and accessible, the music industry must ensure that ethics are a primary consideration for AI and avatar artists, rather than a mere afterthought.