Kelly Clarkson says she loves AI, but AI artists should get their own chart

Kelly Clarkson loves AI. She just doesn’t want AI artists on the same chart as human ones.

“When you see AI artists competing on a chart with humans, I have an issue. I think there should be a separate chart,” she said on Matt Rogers and Bowen Yang’s Las Culturistas podcast, in comments Consequence reported on October 1, 2026.

She opened the take with “I love AI”, and that’s the line the internet went after.

What Kelly Clarkson said about AI on Las Culturistas

Clarkson brought it up in “I Don’t Think So Honey”, the podcast’s hot-take segment.

“Here’s the thing. I love AI,” she said. “There are very amazing things with AI that I am obsessed with, and I’m very into it artistically, too. I have fun with it just like everybody else does.”

She said AI is “welcome to the table”, and that “people that maybe can’t do certain things will be able to do it now.” Her problem is the competition.

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It's basically like having the Olympics, and then you're having robots compete with humans, like who's going to throw further?

She also said AI isn’t going anywhere and praised what it does for science. “We can’t lose human. You can’t lose what that is,” she said. “There can be an appetite for both is what I’m saying.”

The segment starts at 1:22:37 in the episode:

Why Kelly Clarkson’s AI comments drew backlash

Rolling Stone rounded up the replies on X. One user wrote “Very rare Kelly L and it’s an insane one.” Others pointed to the cost of the data centers that run AI models.

Rolling Stone also reported that Clarkson called ChatGPT her “lover” on the show and said it helped her plan the interior design of her home.

Billboard, whose charts she was talking about, ran the story too.

Can AI artists chart on Billboard in 2026?

Yes. Billboard doesn’t ban AI artists from its charts.

Xania Monet became the first AI act on a Billboard chart in September 2025, then signed a multimillion-dollar deal. Two months later, Breaking Rust’s “Walk My Walk” went No. 1 on Billboard’s Country Digital Song Sales chart.

What changes next is labelling. In August, Luminate, the company whose data runs the Billboard charts, said it will tag songs and artists “AI Generated”, and Billboard committed to identifying AI use on its charts. A tag marks the song. It doesn’t move it to a different list.

Which music charts already keep AI songs separate?

Some official charts went further than Billboard this summer, and one separate chart already exists.

• ARIA, Australia: since August 28, 2026, songs made with generative AI are out of the official charts unless they are “substantially human-made”.
• Official Finnish Chart: IFPI Finland shut out fully AI recordings and keeps AI tracks only when humans made most of them with licensed tools.
• SIQA AI Music Charts: a separate weekly Top 100 for AI songs, running since January 2026.

The majors want a say too. On July 29, Universal, Sony, Warner and 8 other labels proposed 6 chart eligibility principles for AI music, and the key one, “substantially human made”, still has no published threshold.

So a separate AI chart already exists in SIQA’s. What Clarkson describes also means keeping AI artists off the main chart, which is what ARIA and Finland did and Billboard hasn’t.