Pozalabs reveals Steal Saturday as its AI-created music act
The five-song ballad record moves the previously electronic project toward acoustic arrangements and guest vocalists.
Pozalabs has publicly identified Steal Saturday as an AI producer created by the Seoul-based music technology company, releasing a five-track ballad album that marks a sharp stylistic turn for the act.
Released on Oct. 26, “Geureomedo, Oneureun” (roughly, “Even So, Today”) centres on people carrying on after their lives have diverged from what they had hoped for. K-EnterTech Hub reported that it was the first time Pozalabs had openly presented Steal Saturday as its own creation.
The project follows Steal Saturday’s electronic debut single, “Anything,” and the EP “Contrast,” which ranged across hyperpop, electropop, house and R&B. The new record instead uses band arrangements, acoustic guitar and strings.
Naran appears on the opening title track, “The Shape of a Dream,” about the continuing value of years spent pursuing a childhood ambition even when the present differs from what was imagined. Its video follows an exhausted protagonist whose room opens out into the ocean and outer space.
Seo Jeong-gil features on “I Had a Dream Too,” the story of a man who wanted to write but earned his living as a fisherman. Eliot Rue sings “Even If It’s Not the Day I Pictured” and “FOMO (Fear Of Missing Ordinary),” while Steal Saturday performs the vocal on the string-led “The Side Dishes Mom Sent.”
Pozalabs, founded in 2018 and based in Seoul’s Seocho district, develops AI music-generation models and offers them through an API, alongside custom production services in which human engineers refine AI-generated drafts. CJ ENM became its second-largest shareholder through an investment in October 2022.
The company has presented its MIDI-based approach as a way to learn harmony rules rather than imitate particular songs. In a 2024 statement responding to concerns raised by SACEM, Pozalabs said its training data comprised more than 1 million MIDI samples and 50,000 vocal samples made by 15 in-house professional composers, rather than external music sources.
The disclosure arrives amid unsettled South Korean rules for AI-assisted music. KOMCA withdrew a trust-management standard 22 days after introducing it, putting reviews and registrations of partly AI-assisted works back on hold. The withdrawn rule would have accepted works only where people had substantially participated in lyrics, composition or arrangement, while music made entirely through text prompts was excluded.
Pozalabs said it planned further releases in other genres and additional collaborations with artists.