Is Spotify streaming AI-generated songs based on dead musicians?
A strange thing happened on Spotify recently. “Together,” a brand-new song by country singer Blaze Foley, appeared on the platform. So what? Given that Foley was murdered in 1989, this seems a little weird.
A report by 404 Media (a must-read) suggests that Spotify is posting new AI-generated songs to the official pages of dead artists. Their families and record labels don’t know anything about this. Check out this screen shot. And by the way, that photo is NOT of Blaze Foley.
The head of Foley’s label, Lost Art Records, says this:
“This song is not Blaze, not anywhere near Blaze’s style, at all. It’s kind of an AI schlock bot, if you will…It’s harmful to Blaze’s standing that this happened. 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.”
Spotify was notified and removed the track under its “deceptive-content” policy.
This isn’t the first time something like this has happened. Guy Clark is a Grammy-winning country singer who died in 2016, yet he managed to release a new track called “Happened to You.” Fake. And then there’s Dan Berk, who is not dead, also had an AI-generated song posted to his page.
Who’s behind this? It appears to be a company called Syntax error.
