Music Time: AI and Music

From Lolita Cercel to the ethical and practical implications of using algorithms in music writing

Ana-Maria Popescu, 08.03.2026, 15:03

Early this year, the Romanian music community saw the controversial rise of Lolita Cercel, a virtual entity whose music, visual identity and bio were created entirely using AI, and whose videos got millions of views, with the public largely unaware of its algorithmic origins. This prompted questions regarding the ethical and practical implications of AI-created or enhanced music for musicians.

I talked to the pianist and composer Irinel Anghel, who identifies a couple of root causes for the generation of music by algorithms: on the one hand, what she calls “the democratization of art” (if art is now accessible to everyone, then why shouldn’t it be accessible to AI as well, she wonders), and on the other hand the way society treats artists as abstractions or as a capital-generating industry.

Although coming from a completely different segment of the music community, Victor Dădaciu, the frontman of the alternative rock band Cardinal, shares the idea that music is more than just another product in a consumer market and that it is the status of the artist that makes the difference.

Vlad Ilicevici, the frontman of the Bucharest-based band Orkid and a coordinator, together with Victor Dădaciu, of Stray Lights, a community of 20-something new Romanian alternative rock banks, looks at things from a more technology-focused perspective, and through a quite optimistic lens.

The composer Irinel Anghel also sees a silver lining in the rise of AI generated music. And unlike Vlad and Victor, who gave me a hard “NO” when I asked if they would ever use AI in writing their music, she says she would definitely use AI for bureaucratic tasks, if that helped her save time to focus on her art. Moreover, she has already incorporated some AI-generated elements in one of her works.