AI invasion: Spotify deletes 75 million spam tracks, blocks AI voice cloning

Top music streaming platform Spotify has blocked 75 million spam tracks and put new measures in place to protect artistes.

The platform in a press release on 25 September said AI has played a key role in sabotaging the efforts of genuine artists coming up in their career.

It is therefore taking measures to protect artists, one of which is to prevent voice cloning and allow royalties to go to creators to which they are due.

Dealing with impersonation

Spotify already has a policy against deceptive content and impersonators, but the advent of AI has defied this policy by making it easier to generate vocal deepfakes of top artists than ever.

To curtail this, the platform is introducing a new impersonation policy that gives artists stronger protections from vocal impersonation except with the permission of the impersonated artist.

The platform is also being upgraded to protect against another impersonation tactic where uploaders fraudulently deliver music (AI-generated or otherwise) to another artist’s profile across streaming services.

The statement added that:

“We’re testing new prevention tactics with leading artist distributors to equip them to better stop these attacks at the source. On our end, we’ll also be investing more resources into our content mismatch process, reducing the wait time for review, and enabling artists to report “mismatch” even in the pre-release state.”

No more spam or masked AI music

Also to ensure no more spam tracks can be uploaded, Spotify is rolling out a new music spam filter that will identify uploaders and tracks engaging in these tactics, tag them, and stop recommending them.

While all these negative uses of AI undermine the technology, the platform acknowledges its relevance and intends to allow legitimate use of it in the creation process.

Hence it is also helping to develop a system that allows artists and rights holders to clearly declare how they used AI in the process of creating their music so that listeners know how much AI is involved in the music they like.