Apple Music will start labeling songs created using AI platforms as “Made with AI.” The company sent a note to its industry partners this week informing them of the change.
The move will require record labels and artists to tag songs if they used artificial intelligence to create a “material portion of the content.”
Apple Music wants AI-generated songs to identify themselves
AI is becoming an increasingly common tool for creating music. It’s capable of generating melodies, harmonies, beats, vocals and even entire songs with relatively little effort on a user’s part. While this can help professionals experiment with ideas more quickly, it also enables people with little or no musical training — or talent — to release tracks.
And AI is raising difficult questions about copyright, ownership, artistic originality and whether musicians should be compensated when their work is used to train AI systems.
As Apple Music is one of the largest streaming music platforms, Apple can’t simply ignore the growing role of AI. Especially after Apple Music Vice President Oliver Schusser recently revealed that more than a third of the tracks uploaded to the platform are entirely AI-generated.
In March, the company announced that all new tracks, artwork, compositions and music videos will require AI transparency disclosures.
Apple is now taking a step further in that direction. In an email to creators this week, the company said creators should start using the “Made with AI” tag for better transparency.
“As we implement Made With AI Labels, content providers will be important partners,” Apple said in its email, according to Variety. They are best positioned to know how their content was created, and the AI Transparency Tags that should be used.”
Apple does not use machine learning systems to detect AI-generated content in music. Instead, it’s relying on creators and labels to declare this. That leaves room for mislabeled or undisclosed songs.
Spotify and other streamers go even farther
Rival streaming service Spotify is taking a stricter approach to AI content in music. Starting in mid-September, it will mark profiles that represent AI-generated identities with an “AI Persona” badge. Spotify will not include songs from those AI “artists” in editorial, algorithmic or personalized recommendations unless a listener follows the creator in question.
As for Tidal, it identifies and labels AI-generated music and blocks those tracks from earning royalties.
Unlike Spotify and Tidal, Apple Music will not remove the “Made With AI” label from its recommendation engine or prevent creators from earning royalties.
Rajesh has been writing about consumer technology for over a decade, with a strong focus on iPhones, Macs and Apple’s ecosystem. He enjoys digging into Apple software updates, hardware changes, and discovering new Mac apps that make work faster and more enjoyable.
You can reach out to him at mail[at]rajeshpandey.me.
