Spotify deletes tens of thousands of songs made with Artificial Intelligence
Spotify has deleted thousands of songs made with AI after fraud attempts and suspicious streaming activity on generative music startup Boomy’s songs.
Artificial intelligence continues to be a hotbed of controversy, and this holds true for the music scene. Weeks ago the fake song Heart On My Sleeve, composed with this tool and imitating the voices of Drake and The Weeknd, was removed from Spotify and Apple Music.
Now the Swedish audio streaming giant has deleted tens of thousands of AI-made songs following complaints received for fraud attempts. The company says they decided to delete the songs after discovering that the AI-generated songs were being used to collect royalties on behalf of fraudulent accounts. Another prominent case was the song created by artificial intelligence that imitated singer Frank Ocean.
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Spotify wages war on AI-generated music
This war that Spotify is now waging against AI-generated music is due to the detection of suspicious activity in the songs of Boomy, a music start-up based on artificial intelligence that generates musical compositions without the cooperation of artists. As reported by the Financial Times, it was the Universal Music label that raised the alarm, after which Spotify withdrew 7% of Boomy’s songs available on the platform.
Added to all this is the fraudulent business produced in a community of music collectors on Discord, where scammers took advantage of songs that may have been leaked before their official release. In statements made to the portal Vice, a scammer confessed to selling leaked songs by composer Frank Ocean for an amount close to $10,000.
The portal also detailed that in clandestine forums, music collectors privately buy tracks that they believe have been leaked from their favorite artists, or participate in “group purchases” on Discord to obtain the necessary funds. The scammers took advantage of the fans of the singer-songwriter who were waiting for the new release of their music idol.
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Spotify's measures to avoid similar cases
Spotify assures that artificial streaming is a known problem in the industry that they are working to completely eliminate from their service. The company enumerated some of the measures that they intend to implement to avoid similar cases in the future, among which are the reduction in the streaming activity of songs depending on their manipulation, the retention of royalties, and the removal of such content bloated by bots.