Music streaming giant Spotify announced on the 21st, local time, that it will prevent low-quality music churned out by artificial intelligence (AI) from pushing out human-created songs.

Accordingly, Spotify has removed more than 50 million tracks suspected of being AI-generated from its recommendation lists since the beginning of this year.

According to U.S. broadcasters like NBC, Spotify characterized AI-generated music as "slop and spam" in a statement released that day, stating, "This no longer deserves a place on our lists."

The company added, "We have made changes to root these out and protect the music listening experience."

Previously, Spotify removed 75 million tracks from its recommendation lists last year for severe and repeated violations of its rules.

These rules prohibit replicating existing creators' content or producing it artificially.

This response comes as streaming service providers, including Spotify, are on high alert to filter out impersonation or deceptive practices among tens of millions of tracks amid a flood of AI-generated music.

Spotify explained that it has sought help from users specifically to address this issue.

Over the past six months, the company has analyzed patterns targeting songs that listeners repeatedly skip or ignore.

Problematic tracks of this nature reportedly exhibited the same patterns as artificially generated low-quality music.

Based on this, Spotify updated its recommendation lists by applying metadata and AI detection tools, enabling the company to limit the frequency with which AI-mass-produced music is exposed to users.

However, Spotify acknowledged the limitations of AI detection tools, stating that detecting suspicious tracks is becoming increasingly difficult.

AI music becomes problematic because it can reduce the revenue received by human creators.

On Spotify, revenue distribution is made based on the proportion of each creator's music in total streaming counts.

If AI-generated music increases and overall play counts grow, the proportion of revenue returning to human creators shrinks.

To receive royalties on Spotify, an artist's music must be played at least 1,000 times.

On the other hand, some creators are seeking coexistence with AI.

Earlier this year, Spotify introduced a feature adding an "AI tag."

This is a feature allowing creators to disclose that they used AI for parts of their songs.

In addition, accounts that uploaded tracks suspected of being AI-made are labeled with an "AI persona" tag, ensuring they are excluded from recommendation lists.

Spotify added that these efforts have significantly reduced concerns regarding the appearance of AI in recommendation lists.
 
(Photo: AP, Yonhap News)