NEW YORK: Spotify has introduced new measures to promote transparency about artificial intelligence use in music while addressing potential abuses.
The streaming platform now recommends that artists and publishers adopt a recently developed standard from the Digital Data Exchange consortium.
This DDEX standard enables music tracks to be labelled according to whether they were created entirely, partially, or not at all using artificial intelligence.
Spotify’s head of music marketing Sam Duboff promised these metadata labels would become available across the entire platform once integrated.
The need for such measures became apparent in June when an AI-generated group called The Velvet Sundown went viral on the platform.
Their most popular song surprisingly accumulated over three million streams on Spotify despite its artificial origins.
The new AI labelling system remains voluntary rather than mandatory for content creators uploading to the platform.
Spotify’s head of music Charlie Hellman explained that initial perceptions about AI in music were overly simplistic during a presentation.
He noted that people originally viewed music as either AI-generated or not AI-generated in a binary fashion.
Hellman emphasised that reality now shows artificial intelligence being incorporated throughout various stages of music production.
The company wants to avoid punishing artists who use artificial intelligence in authentic and responsible ways according to Hellman.
Spotify confirmed that more than fifteen labels and distributors have already committed to using the DDEX labelling standard.
Currently Deezer stands as the only major audio platform systematically identifying tracks fully generated by artificial intelligence.
Regarding completely AI-generated content identified by Spotify, Duboff described its audience as minimal.
He characterised such content as representing a very small percentage of overall streams on the platform.
Duboff observed that music requiring little creation effort typically results in low quality that fails to attract significant listenership.
The platform simultaneously updated its rules to explicitly prohibit unauthorised artificial intelligence uses including deepfakes.
Spotify clarified that creating imitations without proper consent violates their policies and will result in content removal. – AFP
