Enthusiasts like Grimes and A$AP Rocky may embrace AI-generated content, but they won’t produce it themselves. Streaming services, notable musicians, and fans are confronting the growing presence of AI-generated music and drawing lines in the sand.
Spotify Takes Action
On Tuesday, Spotify announced it had removed about 50 million songs considered AI slop from its recommendations to users over the past year. “Our editors hold the same standard and don’t program content identified as slop or spam,” a statement from the company read. Spotify requires “AI persona” badges on artist profiles that don’t represent a real human being, but it does not require individual songs generated by AI to be labeled.
Other streaming services have taken more stringent stances. Though it is cracking down on slop tracks, Spotify is far from AI-shy. The company allows users to create playlists with generative AI and has promised a tool for making AI-generated remixes and cover songs.
Artists Express Their Limits
Unable to ignore the tide, even early AI boosters like Grimes, former paramour of Elon Musk and mother to three of his 14 children, have declared their limits on allowable amounts of AI. She and other musicians say they are open to AI-generated music but wary. Fans, by contrast, have little tolerance for it. They are voting with millions of streams against artifice in music.
Songs and albums harkening back to analog instrumentation are dominating the Billboard charts, with no futurism wanted. Both A$AP Rocky, rapper and partner to Rihanna, and Grimes have taken the same position: accepting AI-generated music but not making it.
““I prefer to do things myself, practically,” A$AP Rocky told Billboard. “If somebody does a totally AI-generated song where all they did was prompt something, then I think that’s their thing. But who am I to say what’s standard and what’s not? I’m just doing me out here, and I’m doing my music practically – the right way.”
