Spotify to add ‘AI Persona’ badges to flag AI-generated artists | Science, Climate & Tech News

Music streaming service Spotify has announced it is introducing a feature that will enable listeners to see if an artist is AI-generated.

The company said that from mid-September, “AI Persona” badges will start to appear on some artist profiles to signal that their identity does not represent a real person.

Spotify said the move was to make the platform more “transparent” and was in response to users expressing concerns about seeing artists that seem human but are in fact AI-generated.

In a statement announcing the development, the company said: “True artist-fan connection can only be built on a foundation of trust and authenticity.

“In music, that means listeners need to be able to trust that the artist behind the music is who they say they are. That’s more essential than ever in the age of generative AI.”

Spotify insisted the badge “is about the artist’s public identity, not about how the music was made”.

It added that, by default, AI personas would not be included in any editorial or algorithmic recommendations unless users followed those artists.

The badges will be displayed in the banner and “About” section of an artist’s profile page, as well as in “Search” and on track rows across playlists.

Listeners will be able to tap the badge to check if an artist has disclosed that their profile represents an AI persona or if the decision was made by Spotify following a review.

Starting on Tuesday, artists will be able to share that their profile represents an AI persona through Spotify for Artists, while, in instances where Spotify has applied the badge, artists will be notified and given the opportunity to self-disclose or appeal.

The company added that listeners will soon be able to report artist profiles they believe represent AI personas to its review team, but it did not disclose when that feature would be available.

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AI music “flooding” streaming platforms

AI-generated music appearing on streaming sites is becoming an increasingly pertinent issue.

Deezer – a French streaming site for music – estimates that 60,000 fully AI songs are being uploaded to its site every day, over a third of all production.

The platform said it is set to receive more than 20 million AI tracks a year, with Romain Hennequin, head of research at Deezer, telling Sky’s Roland Manthorpe earlier this year that “it’s a way to totally flood the music streaming services”.

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Can musicians survive AI music boom?

Last year, Spotify removed 75 million spam tracks, many of which were AI-generated. The platform’s entire catalogue currently stands at 100 million.

While the tracks themselves are not fraudulent, the behaviour around them often is, with an automated system – a bot – being used to repeatedly listen to a song in order to make royalties from it.

Thibault Roucou, Deezer’s head of royalties, said that “the vast majority of the listeners of this content are in fact what we call ‘stream manipulation’ or ‘fraud’.”

“It’s an ongoing battle,” he added.