Spotify Publishes AI-Generated Songs From Dead Artists Without Permission

Spotify was found publishing AI-generated songs on the official pages of deceased artists like Blaze Foley and Guy Clark -- without permission from their estates or labels. The tracks, flagged for deceptive content and now removed, were uploaded via TikTok's SoundOn distribution platform. "We've flagged the issue to SoundOn, the distributor of the content in question, and it has been removed for violating our Deceptive Content policy," a Spotify spokesperson told 404 Media. From the report: McDonald, who decided to originally upload Foley's music to Spotify in order to share it with more people, told me he never thought that an AI-generated track could appear on Foley's page without his permission. "It's harmful to Blaze's standing that this happened," he said. "It's kind of surprising that Spotify doesn't have a security fix for this type of action, and I think the responsibility is all on Spotify. They could fix this problem. One of their talented software engineers could stop this fraudulent practice in its tracks, if they had the will to do so. And I think they should take that responsibility and do something quickly."

McDonald's suggested fix is not allowing any track to appear on an artist's official Spotify page without allowing the page owner to sign off on it first. "Any real Blaze fan would know, I think, pretty instantly, that this is not Blaze or a Blaze recording," he said. "Then the harm is that the people who don't know Blaze go to the site thinking, maybe this is part of Blaze, when clearly it's not. So again, I think Spotify could easily change some practices. I'm not an engineer, but I think it's pretty easy to stop this from happening in the future."

Scummy Company is Scummy....

[SeaFox]

Film at 11.

I doubt this is new

[Big Hairy Gorilla]

I recall probly about 2015 sitting around tuning in playlists on YouTube for my Ladyfriend, Buble and Adele and and if you let it play for an hour, it subtly sounded different.. like they were sung by someone else, cover versions crafted so close to the original... who do you complain to ffs... like that is straight up counterfeit.

Spot-i-FRY

[p51d007]

I've started using youtube music more and more than spotify lately.

don't think this can be coded

[OppMan29]

IA would start flagging real people that sound like other real people, if you just compare sound.

Re:

[Registered Coward v2]

IA would start flagging real people that sound like other real people, if you just compare sound.

Per TFA, the suggestion was to not add any song not approved by the person who admins the musician's official page to that page. That seems a pretty straightforward coding solution for that problem. Spotify could go a step further and require approval of any song claimed to be by a certain artist be approved by the artist or their representative to block any fakes. A bigger challenge is how easy it apparently is to upload songs to Spotify to the point using AI to create music and upload it to Spotify has b

Go back further

[Mspangler]

What kind of concerto grosso could an AI do? PDQ Bach passed away, is there no successor?

But they ASKED the dead!

[nospam007]

They didn't complain for some reason.

This will keep happening

[DrXym]

Maybe Spotify were quick to react this time but how hard is it to find some obscure artist and generate an AI soundalike? How much is their system tainted by AI already - fake tracks or fake bands?

I doubt that Spotify would even tell customers even if they know since their reputation is already in the dumps. And they have already been caught inserting generic in-house garbage into "curated" playlists so I'm sure they're VERY interested in using AI generated slop for themselves.

Re:

[Inglix the Mad]

A simple solution to this exists:

Fine all the C-levels the equivalent of their entire compensation package for as long as this project existed, while they were at the company. Any previous executives are also fined. Fine the company an entire year's income before taxes, depreciation, et al., and make that fine non-deductible from taxes.

You want to claim you are indispensable, that you are steering the ship, that means YOU deserve all the blame. You ware in charge, right? You are the one directing the

Re:

[DrXym]

The simple solution is the legal requirement that any AI generated content that may enter the public domain must, wherever possible, be digitally watermarked indicating what AI created it, an identifier to the original context/query used to generate it and a timestamp. And the watermark, which must be detectable with publicly available tools is embedded in the content in a way that resists efforts to remove it. And the original context/query must be permanently stored for a period of no less than 24 months.