Spotify will start labeling AI-created artists
The streaming service Spotify will introduce a new feature that will allow users to find out whether a music artist's profile is connected to artificial intelligence.
The new AI Persona badge will begin appearing on some artist pages starting in mid-September.
According to the company, the label will be used in cases where the artist's image presented on the platform may be entirely created with the help of AI and may not correspond to a real person.
Spotify expects that the new system will make the origin of content clearer for listeners and help them better understand who is behind music releases.
The company attributes the need for such a feature in part to user reaction; Spotify notes that some listeners encountered profiles that looked like the pages of real musicians, but later found out that there was no real artist behind them. According to the service, users «made it clear» that they want to receive such information in advance.
The AI Persona badge will be placed directly on the artist's page — in the profile banner and in the section with information about the artist. In addition, the corresponding label will be shown when such a musician appears in search results, as well as next to their tracks in playlists.
At the same time, Spotify intends to change its recommendation system as well. Artists marked as created with the help of AI will not appear in users' personalized recommendations unless the users had previously followed the corresponding profile.
The company separately emphasizes that the new labeling concerns specifically the artist's image and identity, rather than the way the music is produced. This is important because the use of AI is gradually becoming part of the ordinary music process, and musicians may use such tools for writing, arranging, processing, or other stages of work on compositions while remaining real people.
To indicate such use, Spotify already offers a separate feature called AI Credits. With its help, artists themselves can report which AI tools were used in the creation of specific tracks.
According to the company, Spotify receives tens of thousands of requests to add such information every day.
AI Persona will work on a somewhat different principle. Spotify expects that the owners of AI-created profiles will disclose information about the nature of their image themselves. At the same time, the service intends to independently check accounts that may meet the established criteria.
As a result, the badge will display information about the origin of the label: the artist could have informed Spotify themselves that their profile or musical image was created using AI, or the corresponding information could have been confirmed by the platform itself during a review.
Thus, Spotify draws a distinction between two phenomena — the use of artificial intelligence in the process of creating music and the existence of an artist that is in fact a digital or entirely AI-generated persona. The new labeling system is intended primarily for the second case.
Source: BBC
