The largest audio streaming platform is facing an overflow of songs created by artificial intelligence and already deleted thousands of them. The scam has happened in an online music community Discord, a platform to gather fans and musicians together to connect. A popular news publication reported, ‘The news shows another example of the seismic impact AI is having on the music industry. In this case, a scammer is preying on fans and music collectors who are desperate for new and unreleased music from one of the industry’s biggest, most reclusive stars,’
Daniel Ek who does not talk to media very often, shared, ‘You can imagine someone uploading a song, claiming to be Madonna, even if they’re not. We’ve seen pretty much everything in the history of Spotify at this point with people trying to game our system,’ continued adding, ‘We have a very large team that is working on exactly these types of issues.’ He quoted while speaking about the challenges in the industry ‘It is going to be tricky,’
He classified the use of AI in music, like
- Tools that directly imitate artists are not acceptable
- Tools such as auto-tone which helps to improve music deemed acceptable
- A further middle ground where music generated by AI is visibly influenced by artists but does not directly mimic the artists, creates a more controversial area.
Michael Nash, chief digital officer of Universal stated, ‘We are always encouraged when we see our partners exercise vigilance around the monitoring or activity on their platforms,’
Rony Jebara, the head of machine learning strategy stated back in 2019, ‘Machine learning is at the heart of everything we do.’
Moreover, Universal’s chief executive Grainge said to the investors, ‘the recent explosive development in generative AI will, if left unchecked, both increase the flood of unwanted content on platforms and create rights issues with respect to existing copyright law’.
Chief executive of the Swedish company Spotify also stated, ‘I don’t think I’ve ever seen anything like it in technology’ while speaking about how fast Artificial Intelligence is making its progress.
The company said, ‘Boomy is categorically against any type of manipulation or artificial streaming. We are working with industry partners to address this issue.’ Further quoted, ‘Artificial streaming is a longstanding, industry-wide issue that Spotify is working to stamp out across our service,’
However, the company denied that the prime issue and stated, ‘The purges are not due to the fact that Boomy’s music is generated by AI. It’s about the patterns of activity around a part of that music. Spotify confirmed [to U.S. portal] Music Ally that some songs had been removed after detecting artificial streaming. The service has also excluded broadcasts of that music from its copyright calculations, ‘
Artists on the platform have raised their voices about their worries regarding the influence of AI on the creative field. Some of them also have expressed their fear over the meeting of AI-generated music and art.
The CEO of Spotify also shared the substantial investment of the company in podcasts, he further added while some ventures are successful others have disappointed the authorities.
Furthermore, before the huge impact of AI-generated tools Spotify warned the musicians on the platform to be aware of the service offers who want to promote their music by using bots. Additionally, the company posted a video on YouTube, that explained briefly the risk of using AI-generated streaming.
