A few weeks ago, a team member at my company, Ircam Amplify, joined one of the many AI music generators available online and gave a short prompt for a song. Within minutes, a new track was created and immediately uploaded to a distribution platform. In just a few hours, this song, in which no human creativity played a role, was available on various streaming platforms. We took diligent action to remove the piece from all of this, but the experiment highlighted an important point.
Now it's that simple! My goal here is not to judge whether AI-generated music is good or bad — in that regard, we're neutral — but we think it's important to point out that while the process is easy and cost-effective, there aren't absolutely no safeguards currently in place to ensure consumers know if the music they're listening to is created by AI. Consequently, they cannot make an informed choice about whether they want to listen to such music.
With AI-generated songs flooding digital platforms, streaming services require huge technological resources to manage the volume of tracks, taking attention away from promoting music created by “human” artists and reducing the pool of rights .
Like it or not, AI is here to stay and more and more songs will find their way onto streaming platforms given how quick and easy the process is. We already know that there are AI-generated music “farms” flooding streaming platforms. more than 25 million tracks were recently removed from Deezer, and it's safe to assume that a significant percentage of them were created by AI.
For the sake of transparency, consumers certainly deserve to know whether the music they tune into is the genuine product of human creativity or is derived from computer algorithms. But how can AI-generated tracks be easily distinguished? Solutions already exist. At Ircam Amplify, we offer a range of audio tools, from surround sound to voice splitter, covering the entire audio supply chain. One of the latest technologies we've launched is an AI-generated detector designed to help rights holders, as well as platforms, identify AI-generated tracks. Through a series of benchmarks, we were able to identify the 'fingerprints' of the AI models and apply them to their output to identify tracks coming from AI music factories.
The purpose of any solution should be to support the entire music ecosystem by providing a technical answer to a real problem, while contributing to a more fluid and transparent digital music market.
Conversations around transparency and artificial intelligence are gaining traction around the world. From Tokyo to Washington, from Brussels to London, policymakers are considering new legislation that would require platforms to identify content generated by artificial intelligence. This is the second recommendation in the recent report “Artificial Intelligence and the Music Industry — Master or Servant?” published by the British Parliament.
Consumers demand it too. A recent UK Music survey of more than 2,000 people, commissioned by Whitestone Insight, emphatically revealed that more than four in five people (83%) agree that if AI technology has been used to create a song, it should clearly marked as such. .
Similarly, a survey conducted by Goldmedia in 2023 on behalf of rights companies GEMA and SACEM found that 89% of collecting society members expressed a desire to clearly identify music and other works created by AI.
These overwhelming numbers tell us that concerns about artificial intelligence are prevalent in creative circles and are also shared by consumers. There are multiple calls for ethical use of AI, mostly coming from rights holders — artists, record companies, music publishers, collective management organizations, etc. — and transparency is usually at the core of these initiatives.
Simply put, if there is artificial intelligence in the recipe, then it should be labeled. If we can collectively find a way to ensure that AI-generated music is found, then we will have made serious progress towards transparency.
Nathalie Birocheau currently serves as CEO at Ircam Amplify and is also a certified engineer (Centrale-Supélec) and former strategic consultant who has led many important cultural and media projects, notably La Maison de la Radio. She became Deputy Director of France Info in 2016, where she led the creation of global media franceinfo.
from our partners at https://www.billboard.com/pro/ai-generated-songs-why-identifying-crucial-guest-column/
