The Southern African Music Rights Organisation (SAMRO) now requires its members to disclose how much AI went into a song when they register it. But it sets no minimum level of human contribution, and it told TechCentral that disclosure does not, on its own, decide whether a song qualifies for copyright or royalties.

The SABC says it is in a similar position: its stations avoid playing fully AI-generated music until clear legal frameworks exist, but it has no firm rules on music that is only partly made with AI.

The rule follows a SAMRO member survey in April, in which 89.2% of 502 respondents said the organisation should push for a law to protect them from AI. SAMRO says it is considering a broader policy but has not set a timeline. The SABC's head of communications, Mmoni Ngubane, said its position is a current editorial approach rather than a finished policy, and that the line between AI-generated and AI-assisted work is one the whole industry is still working through.

The music is already here. Rea Gopane's AI-made amapiano track Suka! reached number one on Apple Music South Africa's top 100 earlier this year. Alberton producer Justin Erasmus, who makes music as Prismatic Wave, says he released 11 albums, five EPs and 20 singles in 13 months using AI tool Suno, and became a member of SAMRO and Sampra by explaining the substantial human work in his process, though he has registered only one song so far. He writes his own lyrics and builds each track from many AI-generated versions, but calls songs made from a simple prompt "slop".

Globally, the volume is enormous. Streaming service Deezer said in July that fully AI-generated tracks made up more than half of its daily uploads at their June peak, nearly 90,000 a day, yet drew only 1% to 3% of listening. Australia's charts now exclude music made entirely by AI, and Universal and Sony sued Suno again in September, even after Warner settled and signed a licensing deal.

TechCentral's Fanie van Rooyen reported SAMRO's and the SABC's positions and tested them against Erasmus's case. Deezer published its figures on the share of AI-generated uploads. The University of Pretoria's guide to copyright and AI notes that South Africa's Copyright Act already covers computer-generated works, but that protection for AI-assisted work remains untested in court.

The idea that South Africa has no AI rules yet is not quite right. The Copyright Act has had a clause since 1992 that covers computer-generated music: the author is the person who made "the arrangements necessary for the creation of the work".

What nobody knows is how a court would apply that to a song made with Suno. Does typing a prompt count as making the arrangements? Erasmus's detailed account of his process reads like an argument that his work clears the bar, and the University of Pretoria's guidance suggests a basic prompt would not.

SAMRO's disclosure rule collects the information without drawing the line, which only delays the decision. Money is why it matters. If AI tracks flood the system, royalty pools get split in more ways, and collecting societies have every reason to set a threshold.

For anyone using AI to make music or other creative work commercially, from jingles to marketing content, the practical step is to keep records of your process, because that is the evidence of the human arrangements the law rewards. It is the same question as watermarking AI text: knowing AI was involved is easy; deciding how much is the hard part.

You might also like our piece on a developer building free Adobe clones with AI, Max Blade's hivecoding, and TikTok's Creator Rewards excluding South Africa.

Get more SA tech and business news and subscribe to The Open Letter.