A lack of regulation in the U.S. surrounding the use of deepfakes has led to a wave of AI artists washing over streaming platforms, but on Tuesday, Spotify announced it was taking a new step to give users some clarity around whether an artist is an actual human being, or a human-like character created by an algorithm. Starting in mid-September, the company will begin applying an “AI Persona” label to the latter category. “Listeners have been clear in telling us that they don’t like seeing an artist profile that seems human, only to find out that the persona is AI-generated,” the company wrote in its announcement. The new label “signals to listeners that an artist’s identity may be AI-generated and does not represent a real person.” Spotify added in its announcement that the human creators behind AI personas on the platform will have an opportunity to self-disclose through Spotify for Artists. A similar voluntary labeling system was proposed last month by a group of organizations representing musicians and record labels.
But the company will also run a review process for suspicious-looking profiles that haven’t self-disclosed, beginning “with artists who have met defined audience thresholds, so the labels cover the vast majority of artist profiles that users visit,” Spotify wrote, without specifying exactly what that threshold would be.
