Not Everyone Is Onboard With iHM's 'Keep It Real' Pledge

iHeartMedia, the parent company of iHeartRadio, has banned all AI-generated music and voices from its stations, podcasts, and streaming platforms, launching a “Guaranteed Human” branding campaign that requires every on-air personality to declare their humanity hourly.

The policy, announced last week in a company-wide memo from President Tom Poleman, explicitly prohibits synthetic songs, AI hosts, and any content created by generative tools. Stations must now include the phrase “Guaranteed Human” in legal IDs alongside the iHeartRadio heartbeat sounder, turning the pledge into both policy and marketing weapon.

The move positions iHeartRadio as the highest-profile broadcaster rejecting AI music at the exact moment the industry is splitting in two. Record labels led by Universal Music Group are striking licensing deals with AI companies such as Udio and Suno, while platforms report 50,000 fully AI-generated tracks uploaded daily and tools like OpenAI’s forthcoming music model promise near-indistinguishable synthetic songs.

Critics call iHeart’s stance ironic given recent layoffs of human DJs, but supporters — including many artists — praise it as the strongest defense yet of human creativity against an oncoming flood of machine-made content.

Broader fallout is already visible: streaming services like Deezer are filtering AI tracks, listeners increasingly demand transparency, and the clash between “infinite AI songs” and “authentic human experiences” is escalating toward regulatory, legal, and cultural showdowns expected in 2026.

In short, iHeartRadio has drawn a line in the sand: all human, all the time — betting that authenticity will win listeners even as the rest of the music ecosystem races to embrace artificial voices and compositions.