J Balvin

J Balvin (José Álvaro Osorio Balvín, born 1985 in Medellín, Colombia) is one of the artists most responsible for taking reggaeton global. Hits like “Mi Gente” and the Cardi B collaboration “I Like It” topped charts far beyond the Spanish-speaking world, and his multiple Latin Grammy wins and record-breaking streaming numbers earned him the nickname “El Negocio” — the business — of Latin music’s worldwide boom.

Signing the ARA letter

In April 2024, Balvin was one of the more than 200 signatories of the Artist Rights Alliance open letter — alongside Billie Eilish, Katy Perry and Nicki Minaj — calling on AI developers, technology companies, platforms and digital music services to “cease the use of artificial intelligence (AI) to infringe upon and devalue the rights of human artists.” CNN’s coverage led with Balvin among the stars lashing out at “enormous” AI threats that “sabotage creativity.”

The letter charged that major companies were training AI models on artists’ work without permission and warned that machine-generated sounds could substantially dilute the royalty pools human musicians are paid from — a pointed concern for streaming-era artists, and for a genre like reggaeton whose distinctive vocal styles are widely mimicked by AI voice clones.

The signatories were careful to distinguish targets: the letter states plainly that responsibly used AI has enormous potential to advance human creativity, reserving its condemnation for unlicensed training, voice theft, and royalty dilution.