On New Year’s Eve 2026, an unexpected squeeze returned to China’s karaoke parlours: rooms were booked out and queues formed. But the revival came with a catch — many of the busiest booths now use AI systems that grade, coach and turn customers’ performances into short videos, changing the social contract of a ritual that was once all about letting go.
Walk into a room fitted with the latest system at Mei KTV and singing is immediately less private. The software captures every phrase, compares it in real time to the original recording, and flashes metrics — pitch deviation, rhythm issues, even automated coaching notes such as “increase chest resonance.” The experience can feel clinical; some customers call it a public trial rather than a party.
Mei KTV’s scoring has been married to gamification and prizes. Customers who pick AI-enabled rooms are automatically entered into national leaderboards; those placing in the top ten on a given day can win designer handbags worth several thousand yuan. For some users the reward has been decisive: people report deliberately “brushing” scores — repeating the same near-perfect song dozens of times — to secure a high ranking and a prize.
The backlash has been immediate on social platforms. Complaints fall into two strands: the emotional mismatch between an intimate, convivial activity and a cold, index-driven system; and practical grievances about audio quality, paywalled auto-tuning and the permanence of recorded performances. Mei KTV’s automated MVs, for instance, have generated bizarre or tone-deaf visuals for slow ballads, undermining rather than enhancing immersion.
Operators defend the shift as survival and reinvention. The KTV sector has plummeted from a peak of roughly 120,000 outlets to under 50,000 by 2024 amid competition from gaming, live events, scripted social activities and mobile singing apps. Brands like Mei KTV and Xingjuhui have invested heavily in AI — Mei’s founder says the chain has spent over Rmb200m (about $28m) on R&D — betting that real‑time scoring, AI editing and intelligent recommendations will attract younger customers and raise per-room revenue.
There are clear commercial gains. AI-generated background videos reduce the need to license original MVs and can sharply cut copyright and footage fees; premium AI rooms are priced higher and operators sell add-ons such as ‘props’ or enhanced audio fixes. For chains struggling with weekday vacancies and an ageing customer base, these levers create new monetisation paths and data streams.
But the technology also exposes limits. Technically, current systems evaluate replicable, objective features — pitch, tempo, timbre similarity to the original — which are susceptible to gaming and favour singers who mimic the studio vocal. They cannot credibly measure subjective qualities such as emotional nuance or stage presence. That gap has predictable cultural consequences: what was once a space for convivial release risks becoming a leaderboard and a performance factory.
There are regulatory and reputational risks too. Substituting AI-generated visuals to avoid MV licensing could invite intellectual property challenges; recording and sharing customers’ performances raises privacy and consent questions, especially when videos circulate beyond the private group. Lastly, the explicit monetisation of “fixes” and scoring access may alienate core customers if they perceive the technology as a pay-to-win mechanic rather than a service enhancement.
For now, AI has given KTV operators a lifeline but not a finished product. If the goal is to restore the social ritual of singing out loud, technology will have to become a subtler, invisible helper — improving sound and ambience without supplanting the human experience. If operators continue to foreground leaderboards and commerce, the revival could end up recreating what many users fled the first time: a transactional pastime that erodes the warmth that once defined it.