- Oliver Schusser of Apple Music says that a third of uploads are AI-generated
- Despite this, only 0.5% of all users engage with this content
- Apple Music has plans to further combat the AI epidemic
Apple Music has become the latest music streaming service to be hit by the influx of AI-generated content, says its VP Oliver Schusser — but it only reaches a very small percentage of all users.
Speaking to Billboard ($/£), Schusser shed light on the state of AI music in Apple Music’s library, sharing that “more than a third of what (Apple Music) gets(s) today is actually what we would say is 100% AI”.
It shows that it’s getting easier for labels and distributors to submit music made entirely using AI, and Apple Music isn’t the only service facing this epidemic. Last week, Deezer stated that almost half of the new music sent to the platform is AI-generated, which resulted in the company’s decision to stop offering high-resolution versions of these songs.
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So how does Apple plan to put out the AI fire? Well, Schusser went into detail in his interview. “We’ve never talked about this – but we’ve developed technology internally that would allow us to see exactly what music people are providing 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 mark AI-generated and AI-assisted music. This means that labels and distributors can reveal whether AI has been used in a song’s production when they submit to Apple Music. Although optional, Schusser made it clear that he “really needs the content providers and the labels to take responsibility”.
There’s no doubt that fully AI-generated music is popping up on top music streaming services, but Schusser unveiled an interesting statistic that may come as a surprise: Despite the increase, it’s not having a huge impact on users’ listening and engagement habits. “The reality is that the usage of the AI music on Apple Music is very small. I’m rounding, but it’s under 0.5% of usage. We’re just at the beginning here,” he told Billboard — but fraud is still rife.
This is another problem that Apple Music is cracking down on, but it has been doing this since the good old iTunes days: “This has been a 20-year journey because there was obviously already fraud in iTunes,” Schusser said, which led to the introduction of Apple’s fraud penalty. The company also doubled that penalty starting this year.
But the fight is not over, as Schusser puts it: “We invest far more than anyone else in reducing and eliminating fraud. We implemented a fraud penalty four years ago, where if we catch someone, we actually take the money and put it back in the pool. We have to monitor AI music because there is 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 who haven’t run into AI-generated music flooding my recommendations in Apple Music as well as Spotify, though the latter has come under considerable scrutiny for harboring AI slop. Like other platforms, Spotify is also working to protect users by removing 25 million AI tracks in the last 12 months and devising a solid AI battle strategy for the future.
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