Comment by mjr00

You'll notice in the article they mention that these AI artists got into the charts thanks to 1,000 downloads sold. 1,000 is a comically easy number to game; that's US$1,000, tops, and far less if you pay for false downloads from SEA and such where prices are lower.

As a concrete example of how gamed these are, look at one of the examples from the article, Enlly Blue[0]. The video for the song mentioned in the article, Through My Soul, has 10 million views. All four of her (its?) most recent videos over the past 1 month: 2.2k views, 3.3k views, 2.1k views, 2.1k views. The views stop coming when the creator stops spending.

[0] https://www.youtube.com/@EnllyBlueOfficial/videos