Alessia Cara seeks the human touch in an age of AI and algorithms

TORONTO –  

Alessia Cara recently came across an AI-generated song that was supposed to sound like her. It didn’t — not quite, bless its heart — but it got close enough to be unsettling.

“It’s so crazy because it will take some of your isms, like the way that you breathe or the way you pronounce something,” says the Brampton, Ont. singer-songwriter.

“It kind of freaks me out… I just feel like having something be able to take your likeness and have you say things that you didn’t say, it’s a little scary and alarming.

“I don’t love AI. I’m all for human creation.”

The experience was on Cara’s mind while making her latest album “Love or Lack Thereof,” a collection of fully human, live-off-the-floor jazz-soul reinterpretations of her past work that let the cracks show.

A self-described perfectionist, Cara says the project pushed her out of that mindset. 

“If I don’t sing something to what I deem as perfect, I have to redo it a hundred times until I get it right. And I feel like with this, you can’t really do that,” she says.

“It allowed me to practice freedom and letting things be what they are. I think that’s more beautiful. Imperfect stuff is actually where the humanness is.”

The album also marks Cara’s 10-year career milestone. A decade ago, her breakout loner anthem “Here” catapulted her to stardom, leading to a Grammy for best new artist in 2018 and multiple Juno Awards. 

In that sense, the project doubles as a kind of retrospective, taking songs spanning romance and heartbreak and revisiting them through a more mature lens.

The bedroom-pop blush of “I’m Yours,” off her 2015 debut “Know-It-All,” is reimagined as a tender, horn-accented ballad, while 2021’s scorned confessional “Shapeshifter” becomes a spaghetti-western standoff assisted by Nelly Furtado, whom Cara recently honoured at the Junos.

“It’s like reopening an old diary,” Cara laughs. “I thought everything was the end of the world.”

Despite her success, she says the music industry has changed dramatically since her debut, describing the last decade as “tough to witness, but also to be a part of.”

Cara broke through at a time when the business still had a recognizable structure — clear promotional cycles, defined roles, a linear album rollout strategy. 

Nowadays, between streaming, social media, and a constant demand for content, things are more unpredictable.

“It feels like I don’t recognize it sometimes. Which can feel really scary, because you’re like, ‘OK, where do I find my place in this?’” says the 29-year-old.

“You feel sometimes almost like a soccer mom making dumb jokes in a car full of teens or something… That’s how I feel. Like a mom trying to fit in.”

The shift, she adds, has forced artists into a new set of roles.

“You have to wear different hats now that I didn’t have to wear before — you have to be a social media personality, an analyst, a content creator, all these things I’m not used to,” she says. 

Cara says she can see the good and the bad to the changes. Artists can now create and release instantly, without middlemen or major budgets. But the landscape, she adds, is more crowded and harder to make sense of.

“I think we all are in a very transitional period — with AI, with the industry — and everybody is trying to find their footing.”

That instability is especially tangible on the road. 

Last year, Cara was forced to cancel her Latin American tour after, she said at the time, a local promoter “simply lost faith and pulled out.” The U.S. leg of her tour was also postponed due to what she described as circumstances beyond her control. 

“We’re coming off of a world pandemic, and we are in a serious recession. We see it all over the world,” she says.

“And so when people make their money, which is very hard to make nowadays and sustain, it’s harder for people to go out and spend money on a ticket or on a physical album.”

Worsening the issue, Cara adds, is corporate intermediaries and resellers “racking up prices.”

“There are so many middlemen in between the artist and the fan nowadays, unfortunately, with these big corporations that just take advantage,” she says.

“It’s tough, because music and the love of music is such an innocent thing, and then when you put capitalism around it, it becomes so tainted. It’s tough to maintain the innocence, and it’s tough to not be discouraged as a fan and as an artist.”

Last month, Ontario Premier Doug Ford announced a proposed law to ban the resale of tickets for more than their original value ahead of the FIFA World Cup.

Cara says she’s unsure if legislation is the solution, but agrees something needs to change.

“I hope it gets fixed because I really want my listeners who love my music to be able to afford to come and see me. And I want to be able to afford to come out and see them too,” she says.

In the meantime, Cara says she’s looking for more ways to connect directly with fans. 

She’s started floating ideas like playing more intimate venues, livestreamed shows or even free pop-ups, though each comes with logistical hurdles. 

Cara says social media, for all its headaches, remains a powerful — and cost-effective — way to reach audiences.

“We should just lean into human connection as much as we can,” she says, “and find ways to maintain that innocence and that purity of artist to listener — and just the love of music.”

This report by The Canadian Press was first published April 3, 2026.