AI-generated songs are reportedly being uploaded to dead musicians’ profiles on Spotify.
In a report by 404 Media, this phenomenon was uncovered when they noticed Blaze Foley – a country musician best known for his track ‘Clay Pigeons’ – had released a new single called ‘Together’ last week.
The track, which “vaguely sounds like a new, slow country song”, reportedly sounded very different from Foley’s original work, who was murdered in 1989. Additionally, the single artwork appeared to be an AI-generated image of a man singing into a microphone – who shares very little resemblance to the real Foley.
Craig McDonald, who is in charge of distributing Foley’s music and managing his Spotify page via his label Lost Art Records, said the song appeared on the artist’s profile without permission. “I can clearly tell you that this song is not Blaze, not anywhere near Blaze’s style, at all,” he told the publication. “It’s kind of an AI schlock bot, if you will.”
“It’s harmful to Blaze’s standing that this happened,” he continued. “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.”
The song has now been removed from Spotify; a spokesperson for the streaming platform told 404 Media in an email that the song had been “removed for violating our Deceptive Content policy”. They also claimed that SoundOn, a company owned by TikTok, was the distributor of the song.
‘Together’ apparently had a copyright from a company called Syntax Error; 404 Media found that on Spotify, the same company had copyright over another AI-generated song and single cover called ‘Happened To You’. The song, which has now been removed, was uploaded to the page of cult country musician Guy Clark, who won the 2014 Grammy for Best Folk Album and died two years later.
Syntax Error also appears to be behind ‘With You’, which was uploaded onto the platform on July 14 under living musician Dan Berk’s name. The cover for ‘With You’ also features an AI-generated man singing, who looks nothing like Berk. According to 404 Media, Berk did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
However, in a statement from a spokesperson for deepfake detection company Reality Defender, all the above tracks “have indicators that show a higher-than-normal probability of AI generation.”
This is not the first time AI music has been allowed on Spotify’s platform. The seemingly AI-generated band The Velvet Sundown were reported to have over 400,000 monthly Spotify listeners – despite existing for less than a month.
Speculation continued to emerge after Redditors noticed their Instagram account look eerily AI-generated.
Elsewhere, SZA has slammed AI users “codependent on a machine”: “Please Google how much energy and pollution it takes to run AI”.