Spotify has removed an artificial intelligence-generated song from the platform that it claimed came from a country singer who died in 1989. Another issue that streaming services now have to contend with, thanks to advances in artificial intelligence, is fake songs purportedly by lesser-known or deceased musicians.
AI-generated songs being mass-produced for streaming services and monetized by bots have been an issue for some time. But over the weekend, a song called "Together" appeared on Blaze Foley's official certified artist page, highlighting another AI conundrum facing companies like Spotify.
In 1989, Foley was shot and killed during an argument with a friend's son. This was not a recently discovered song that had been missing for 36 years; it was a fake song, using AI-generated vocals and a cover image—of a man who looked nothing like Foley—also created by genAI. To make it look more authentic, it even comes with credits and copyright information.
Fans of the singer and her label, Lost Art Records, revealed the song to Spotify. Foley's repertoire manager Craig McDonald said the song's style was different from his other works and the quality was far from what listeners expected.
McDonald suggested that Spotify should not allow any track to appear on an artist's official page without prior approval from the page owner.
Foley's song isn't alone. The company that owns the copyright mark that appears on Tomorrow's page was also found to have faked another AI-generated song. The song, titled "Happened To You," is said to be by Grammy Award-winning country singer Guy Clarke, who died in 2016. The song also features an AI-generated cover featuring a character who bears no resemblance to Clarke.
A third song titled "With You" is claimed to have been written by Dan Burke and also bears a copyright mark. The song was uploaded at the same time as the others and included an AI-generated image of a person who didn't look like Burke.
Spotify said it removed Blaze's song because it violated its "deceptive content" policy. Spotify also contacted the song's publisher, SoundOn, which is owned by TikTok. 404 Media writes that the company's main purpose is to allow people to upload music directly to TikTok and earn royalties.
"The content in question violates Spotify's Deceptive Content Policy, which prohibits impersonation intended to mislead, such as copying another creator's name, image, or description, or deceptively impersonating a person, brand, or organization," Spotify said in a statement.
This is not allowed. We will take action against licensors and distributors who fail to police this type of fraud, and those with repeated or serious violations will be permanently removed from Spotify.
Spotify has never revealed how these tracks ended up on the official artist page.
It turns out that AI-generated tracks are just as problematic when people use bots to fraudulently stream and profit from them. Last year, a man was accused of defrauding music services out of $12 million by uploading hundreds of thousands of artificially intelligent tracks and using more than 1,000 bots to "listen" to the music.