Fans are not buying his explanation.
1 hour ago
Jang Cheol Hyuk, the current CEO of SM Entertainment (SME hereon), is facing massive heat online after announcing the company’s policy to integrate AI into its artist management responsibilities.
Jang Cheol Hyuk | SM Entertainment
In a recently published video, Jang was seen saying that the company intends to use AI to analyze trends and help the agency understand the global market better. He emphasized that AI would not replace the creative core of SME’s music.
The core of SM’s business, creation, and production, will continue to place artists and creativity at the centre. We see AI as a tool to support our understanding of global market trends and data, rather than something that replaces the creative heart of what we do.
— Jang Cheol Hyuk
He added that the company will use AI to get recommendations for new releases, based on the data of the body of work SME artists have built in the last 30 years.
By analyzing the tens of thousands of songs accumulated by SM over the past 30 years, AI will be able to recommend tracks with a high level of suitability for each artist, helping fans discover music that brings greater enjoyment and better aligns with individual tastes.
— Jang Cheol Hyuk
This statement has left fans infuriated as they realized that SM Entertainment has fed the music created by several artists in the past 30 years to an AI model, with no guarantees about its consequences. Many also pointed out that having AI determine new releases was not only disrespectful to artists but also a reflection incompetence of the agency, which should be doing this job in the first place.
So, SM entertainment CEO Jang Cheol-hyuk said he fed 30 years of SM artists’ songs into AI to generate music tailored to each artist. Excuse me??? 🥴🥴
GenAI IS NOT ART!!!!
Stop destroying music industry with this AI garbage @SMTOWNGLOBAL https://t.co/FyLvQX2T4B pic.twitter.com/6yZzS3M6iD
— nat 🦋 (@exovenne) January 21, 2026
Sm is destroying kpop https://t.co/69vXuTi1RD
— Head stray (@Iostarkives) January 21, 2026
Summary is they don’t have their own braincell now to decide which song is most perfect for which group so they let Ai decide it. https://t.co/WWcdj5Nysq
— Boxian (@exoforlife_9) January 21, 2026
ai is a tool and will not replace the creative heart of what we do 🙂 which is why we put all of our songs through ai to assign songs to artists without input from actual humans 🙂 https://t.co/siyH9Rthw3
— mae🧸.ᐟ (@lgbtaekey) January 21, 2026
how are you gonna say you will place artists and their creativity at the center and then say you feed their whole discographies to AI to generate “music” that will sound like a reheated soulless mess, how does that even make sense https://t.co/Ks3BZLAxMZ
— ︎404 (@borrowtheskies) January 21, 2026
no wonder their recent music sounds like ass https://t.co/IUF5NgInlm
— . (@kyoongslice) January 20, 2026