As the boundaries between technology and music continue to blur, SM Entertainment has revealed an ambitious partnership with music-tech startup Verses to develop AI-generated rap music through a platform called “Rappie.” Launched in beta in June 2025, Rappie represents the world’s first Multimodal AI Rapmaker, capable of generating lyrics, rhythms, and vocals based on simple text inputs from users.
The groundbreaking collaboration aims to produce official tracks and immersive XR concerts featuring AI-generated rap music, fundamentally redefining how fans interact with musical content. The official announcement, made on September 1, 2025, has already generated significant buzz throughout the music industry. Verses’ sophisticated technology integrates AI-driven text, rap generation, and video creation into a seamless production process that requires no musical expertise from users.
This groundbreaking partnership merges AI with musical artistry, eliminating barriers between fan creativity and professional production.
Rappie’s multimodal AI synchronizes avatars’ facial expressions and body movements with rap performances, creating realistic presentations that convert simple keywords into complete rap tracks within seconds. The technology matches input text to themes and emotions, producing high-quality rap music instantly accessible to users regardless of musical background. The platform incorporates sweeping filters to manipulate vocal sounds, creating unique textures similar to techniques used in underwater ambience design.
This partnership builds on previous successful collaborations between the companies, including the “aespa world” project within Zepeto, an avatar-based metaverse platform with over 400 million users. That initiative allowed fans to interact with K-Pop group aespa through AI-driven features like music video generation and sound manipulation, earning a nomination for the CES 2024 Innovation Award. This partnership represents a shift in methods for music creation in the industry. Artists will need to adapt their promotion strategies to incorporate these AI-generated elements while maintaining authentic fan engagement.
The culmination of the Rappie project will be an Extended Reality concert delivering immersive live performances where fans gain interactive experiences beyond passive listening. Through XR environments and AI co-creation tools, the traditional fan-artist relationship evolves toward collaboration and participation.
Verses’ Meta Music System technology powers these dynamic virtual environments where fans co-create with artists, potentially transforming content creation paradigms across the music industry. By democratizing music-making through instant content generation, this project exemplifies the growing fusion of AI, music production, and virtual entertainment in both South Korean and global music markets, pointing toward a future where technology and creativity increasingly converge.
