Artificial intelligence fakes musicians' legacy: Spotify accused of fraud

Recently, the independent portal 404 Media discovered on Spotify a number of new songs created with the help of artificial intelligence and uploaded to the pages of deceased musicians without their permission. One such example is a track called "Together", uploaded to the page of country singer Blaze Foley, who was killed in 1989. Despite the subsequent removal, the melody, according to 404 Media, “remotely” resembled Foley’s style, but was not accompanied by an appropriate image.

The owner of the label that distributes Foley's music, Craig McDonald, called the track "a created bot with artificial intelligence" and stressed that it is completely out of step with Foley's style, damaging his reputation.

At the same time, 404 Media attributes this situation to Syntax Error, whose copyright also appears on the Spotify page for songs created with the help of AI. Similar cases have also been found with songs uploaded under the names of musicians Dan Burke and Guy Clarke, and according to Reality Defender experts, all of these tracks indicate a higher probability of AI generation.

Spotify has acknowledged a violation of its deceptive content policy and said it has taken action against infringers, including removing from the platform those who commit repeated or serious violations. Similar cases have already been recorded, for example, with the Velvet Sundown group, fully generated by artificial intelligence. This raises serious questions about the safety and responsibility of streaming music platforms regarding the use of AI to create and distribute content tampered with by the legacy of famous musicians.