The Australian Recording Industry Association has become the first national chart body to implement eligibility rules for recordings made with generative AI, confirming that wholly AI-generated tracks will be barred from the ARIA Charts.
Recordings that use AI in a supporting role remain eligible; tracks generated wholesale by AI do not. The changes take effect from the chart dated Monday, Aug. 31.
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To qualify, a recording must be “substantially human-made” and raise “no stream or chart manipulation concerns,” with ARIA applying the global music industry’s AI labelling standard, announced July 10, to tell AI-generated recordings from AI-assisted ones.
The move implements the global principles set by the IFPI and the major labels earlier this year — ARIA being the first national chart body to adopt them with a firm date.
“Artists already use AI tools in their work, the charts can and should evolve to keep room for that, but music generated wholesale by services built on artists’ recordings is a different matter,” ARIA CEO Annabelle Herd said. She added that “a chart that rewards unlicensed AI output would undercut the very basis of the recorded music we exist to represent,” and urged other decision-makers, “particularly radio,” to adopt similar codes.
The rules carry teeth. ARIA can decline to survey an ineligible recording, remove it from the charts, adjust positions, withdraw accreditations, and revoke any ARIA No. 1 Award; ineligible tracks are also barred from the ARIA Awards. Artists can contest exclusions through an updated disputes process.
The policy arrives as AI-generated music has begun testing the boundaries of chart systems worldwide. The AI country act Breaking Rust reached No. 1 on Billboard’s Country Digital Song Sales chart in 2025, and in April 2026 the AI act IngaRose topped iTunes charts in the U.S. and globally — cases that focused industry attention on the absence of any chart rules governing AI.
Neither involved detected streaming fraud; both drew on real purchases or organic interest on narrower charts.
ARIA said it will keep the code under review as AI policy and technology continue to develop.
