- Oliver Schusser from Apple Music says a 3rd of uploads are AI-generated
- Regardless of this, solely 0.5% of all customers are participating with this content material
- Apple Music has plans to fight the AI epidemic even additional
Apple Music has grow to be the newest music streaming service to be hit with the inflow of AI-generated content material, says its VP Oliver Schusser — nevertheless it’s reaching solely a really small share of all customers.
Speaking with Billboard ($/£), Schusser make clear the state of AI music in Apple Music’s library, sharing that “greater than a 3rd of what (Apple Music) get(s) at this time is definitely what we might say is 100% AI”.
It goes to indicate that it’s turning into simpler for labels and distributors to submit music that’s utterly made utilizing AI, and Apple Music isn’t the one service that’s going through this epidemic. Simply final week, Deezer declared that nearly half of the new music submitted to the platform is AI-generated, resulting in the company’s decision to stop offering hi-res versions of these songs.
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So, how is Apple planning to put out the AI fire? Well, Schusser went into further detail in his interview. “We’ve never talked about this — but we’ve developed technology in-house that would allow us to exactly see what music people are delivering us, what AI (model) it is and all that,” he reveals, likely referring to Transparency Tags.
Back in March, Apple sent out a letter to industry partners revealing its plans to roll out ‘Transparency Tags’, a new metadata system to help flag AI-generated and AI-assisted music. This means labels and distributors can disclose whether AI has been used in a song’s production when submitting to Apple Music. Though it’s optional, Schusser made it clear that he “really need(s) the content providers and the labels to take responsibility”.
There’s no denying that fully AI-generated music is cropping up in the best music streaming services, but Schusser unveiled an interesting statistic that may come as a surprise: despite the rise, it’s not having a huge impact on users’ listening and engagement habits. “The reality is, the usage of the AI music on Apple Music is really tiny. I’m rounding, but it’s below 0.5% of usage. We’re just at the beginning here,” he told Billboard — but fraud is still rife.
This is another issue on which Apple Music is clamping down, but it’s been doing this since the good old iTunes days: “This has been a 20-year journey because there was fraud, obviously, in iTunes already,” Schusser said, which led to the introduction of Apple’s fraud penalty. The company also doubled this penalty as of this year.
But the battle isn’t over, as Schusser puts it, “We invest way more than anyone else in reducing and eliminating fraud. We implemented a fraud penalty four years ago, where if we catch someone, then we actually take the money and put it back in the pool. We need to monitor AI music because there’s a correlation between AI and fraud”. He also shared that Apple has seen a “60% reduction” in fraudulent uploads after implementing the penalty.
As it stands, I’ve been one of the lucky ones not to have run into AI-generated music flooding my recommendations in Apple Music as well as Spotify, though the latter has come under significant scrutiny for housing AI slop. Like other platforms, Spotify is also working toward safeguarding users by removing 25 million AI tracks in the last 12 months, and devising a solid AI combat strategy for the future.
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