SVT expects AI-generated songs among a record 4,077 Melodifestivalen 2027 entries, while NRK bans them from Melodi Grand Prix

4,077 songs. That’s how many entries SVT got for Melodifestivalen 2027, Sweden’s selection show for the Eurovision Song Contest, and it’s a new record.

SVT thinks a lot of them came out of AI. Project manager Anders Wistbacka told Aftonbladet the team is “convinced that we will receive quite a few AI songs,” in Eurovoix’s translation. He can’t say how many, because SVT has no tools to check.

Norway’s NRK went the other way. It bans pure AI compositions from Melodi Grand Prix 2027, and it still found dozens of them in its pile, NRK reported on October 12, 2026.

Melodifestivalen 2027: no AI ban, but every entry is sung live

SVT hasn’t banned AI in songwriting, and it doesn’t want to write the rule itself. “We don’t want to be the first to come up with rules for what should apply, but this is an issue that the music industry will solve, needs to solve,” Wistbacka said.

So how does SVT spot an AI entry without a detector? Wistbacka’s answer is a pattern: a name nobody knows, sending in a lot of songs across a lot of genres.

He still doesn’t expect a fully AI-made song to reach the 30 entries in the show. Every song has to be performed by artists who sing live, and as he told the Swedish news agency TT (via Gaffa, my translation): “It is not a computer that will stand and sing on stage on Saturdays in Melodifestivalen.”

AI already sat inside this year’s show, by the way. In May, songwriter Anders Wrethov said he used Suno in production on 2 Melodifestivalen 2026 entries, Brandsta City Släckers’ “Rakt in i elden” and Meira Omar’s “Dooset Daram,” with the lyrics and melodies written by people, Gaffa reported.

SVT also has a cost problem. It listens to every song, and Wistbacka said a jump to 10,000 entries would mean boosting the budget.

Melodi Grand Prix 2027: NRK bans pure AI songs, but keeps AI tools

NRK’s project manager Mads Tørklep put the ban in one line: “There’s no point in having a music competition where a computer has done the whole job” (my translation from NRK’s Norwegian).

“

And these are ordinary people sending them in. They're not musicians.

Most of the 30 to 50 AI senders were open about it, Tørklep said, people who had prompted something they thought was really good. NRK’s music team, led by music boss Tarjei Strøm, goes through every entry and skips the songs that are obviously AI.

NRK still allows AI tools in the studio. Tørklep said using AI tools in production has become industry standard in Norway, for inspiration or technical transitions, and NRK used AI for special effects and interval acts in the last 2 Melodi Grand Prix editions.

Eurovision itself has no shared rule yet. NRK notes there are no common guidelines for AI in songwriting across broadcasters, though Eurovision director Martin Green said at a press event in Vienna that “songs will always be created by humans,” Aussievision reported.

Italy’s biggest contest already wrote its own. Sanremo 2027 bans AI that replaces human creativity and lets RAI check every entry, and in the Nordics, 77% of listeners want AI music labelled.

Until Eurovision sets a rule, each broadcaster is writing its own, and you get 2 very different answers on either side of the same border.