Deezer Tackles AI-Generated Music Fraud with New Labeling System

Deezer starts labeling AI-generated music to tackle streaming fraud | TechCrunch

Deezer announced on Friday that it will start labeling albums that include AI-generated tracks as part of its efforts to combat streaming fraud. The company reports that about 18% of the music uploaded each day -- more than 20,000 tracks -- is now fully AI-generated. Although most of these tracks don't go viral, Deezer says around 70% of their streams are fake and that they are designed to earn royalties fraudulently. To combat this, AI-generated tracks on Deezer are now clearly tagged. These tracks also won't appear in editorial playlists or algorithm-based recommendations, and fraudulent streams are being filtered out of royalty payments. The company says the new labels will be a game changer in helping listeners determine the difference between human-created music and AI content. Deezer notes that for now, AI-only songs make up just 0.5% of all streams on its platform, but that the trend is growing fast. "We've detected a significant uptick in delivery of AI-generated music only in the past few months and we see no sign of it slowing down. It's an industry-wide issue, and we are committed to leading the way in increasing transparency by helping music fans identify which albums include AI music," said Deezer CEO Alexis Lanternier in a press release. "AI is not inherently good or bad, but we believe a responsible and transparent approach is key to building trust with our users and the music industry," he continued. "We are also clear in our commitment to safeguarding the rights of artists and songwriters at a time where copyright law is being put into question in favor of training AI models." The move comes as Universal Music Group, Warner Music Group, and Sony Music Entertainment are reportedly in talks to license their work to AI startups Udio and Suno. The startups are being sued by the record companies for copyright infringement, and any deal would help to settle lawsuits between them, Bloomberg reported earlier this month.

Music streaming service Deezer adds AI song tags in fight against fraud

LONDON (AP) -- Music streaming service Deezer said Friday that it will start flagging albums with AI-generated songs, part of its fight against streaming fraudsters. Deezer, based in Paris, is grappling with a surge in music on its platform created using artificial intelligence tools it says are being wielded to earn royalties fraudulently. The app will display an on-screen label warning about "AI-generated content" and notify listeners that some tracks on an album were created with song generators. The company said AI-generated music is an "industry-wide issue." It's committed to "safeguarding the rights of artists and songwriters at a time where copyright law is being put into question in favor of training AI models," CEO Alexis Lanternier said in a press release. Deezer's move underscores the disruption caused by generative AI systems, which are trained on the contents of the internet including text, images and audio available online. AI companies are facing a slew of lawsuits challenging their practice of scraping the web for such training data without paying for it. According to an AI song detection tool that Deezer rolled out this year, 18% of songs uploaded to its platform each day, or about 20,000 tracks, are now completely AI generated. Just three months earlier, that number was 10%, Lanternier said in a recent interview. AI has many benefits but it also "creates a lot of questions" for the music industry, Lanternier told The Associated Press. Using AI to make music is fine as long as there's an artist behind it but the problem arises when anyone, or even a bot, can use it to make music, he said. Music fraudsters "create tons of songs. They upload, they try to get on playlists or recommendations, and as a result they gather royalties," he said. Musicians can't upload music directly to Deezer or rival platforms like Spotify or Apple Music. Music labels or digital distribution platforms can do it for artists they have contracts with, while anyone else can use a "self service" distribution company. Fully AI-generated music still accounts for only about 0.5% of total streams on Deezer. But the company said it's "evident" that fraud is "the primary purpose" for these songs because it suspects that as many as seven in 10 listens of an AI song are done by streaming "farms" or bots, instead of humans. Any AI songs used for "stream manipulation" will be cut off from royalty payments, Deezer said. AI has been a hot topic in the music industry, with debates swirling around its creative possibilities as well as concerns about its legality. Two of the most popular AI song generators, Suno and Udio, are being sued by record companies for copyright infringement, and face allegations they exploited recorded works of artists from Chuck Berry to Mariah Carey. Gema, a German royalty-collection group, is suing Suno in a similar case filed in Munich, accusing the service of generating songs that are "confusingly similar" to original versions by artists it represents, including "Forever Young" by Alphaville, "Daddy Cool" by Boney M and Lou Bega's "Mambo No. 5." Major record labels are reportedly negotiating with Suno and Udio for compensation, according to news reports earlier this month. To detect songs for tagging, Lanternier says Deezer uses the same generators used to create songs to analyze their output. "We identify patterns because the song creates such a complex signal. There is lots of information in the song," Lanternier said. The AI music generators seem to be unable to produce songs without subtle but recognizable patterns, which change constantly. "So you have to update your tool every day," Lanternier said. "So we keep generating songs to learn, to teach our algorithm. So we're fighting AI with AI." Fraudsters can earn big money through streaming. Lanternier pointed to a criminal case last year in the U.S., which authorities said was the first ever involving artificially inflated music streaming. Prosecutors charged a man with wire fraud conspiracy, accusing him of generating hundreds of thousands of AI songs and using bots to automatically stream them billions of times, earning at least $10 million.

Deezer says 70% of AI music streams on its service are fake

In brief: The problem of AI-generated music on streaming platforms being "listened" to by AI is so bad on Deezer, up to seven out of every 10 streams of AI tracks are fraudulent, according to the company. The practice can be a lucrative one: in 2024, a man was arrested over claims that he conned music services out of $12 million using this method. The French streaming giant said that AI-generated music accounts for just 0.5% of streams on the platform. However, its own analysis shows that 70% of those streams are fraudulent. The advent of generative AI and widespread use of the technology has caused more than just copyright-infringement problems for the music industry. Fraudsters realized that they could use the AI tools to quickly generate tens of thousands of music tracks. They then use AI, sometimes in combination with real humans, to listen to these tracks, earning royalties in the process. With so many tracks uploaded, it only requires a small number of constant listeners per song for the money to quickly add up. This also helps avoid detection measures that look for an unusually large number of listeners on unknown tracks. Thibault Roucou, the director of royalties and reporting at Deezer, said (via The Guardian) that the manipulation of AI-generated music was a bid to "get some money from royalties." "As long as there is money [in fraudulent streaming] there will be efforts, unfortunately, to try to get a profit from it," he said. "That's why we're investing in fighting it, because we know it's not going away and we need to be one step ahead every time." Deezer says it uses a tool that can detect 100% AI-created content from AI music generators such as Suno and Udio. Both these companies were hit with separate copyright infringement lawsuits from music labels Universal Music Group, Warner Music Group, and Sony Music Group last year for scraping copyrighted content from the internet without compensation or credit. Their defense was that they admitted to engaging in these practices but claimed it fell under fair use. Deezer said that 18% of all daily uploads to its platform, around 20,000 tracks, were AI-generated. The company added that it is removing all fully AI-generated content from its algorithmic recommendations. Fraudulent streaming has always been a problem on music platforms, but AI has exacerbated the problem a thousandfold. According to authorities, between 2017 and 2024, 52-year-old Michael Smith of Cornelius, North Carolina, and his co-conspirators fraudulently inflated the number of streams for his AI-generated tracks on platforms including Spotify, Amazon Music, Apple Music, and YouTube. Smith's operation consisted of 52 cloud service accounts, each with 20 bot accounts, totaling 1,040 bots. It's estimated that each account could stream around 636 songs daily, accessing the platforms via VPNs, resulting in 661,440 streams every day. At a royalty rate of half a cent per stream, he worked out payments at $3,307 daily, $99,216 monthly, and more than $1.2 million annually.

Up to 70% of streams of AI-generated music on Deezer are fraudulent, says report

According to the French streaming platform's analysis, fraudsters use bots to listen to AI music and take the royalties Up to seven out of 10 streams of artificial intelligence-generated music on the Deezer platform are fraudulent, according to the French streaming platform. The company said AI-made music accounts for just 0.5% of streams on the music streaming platform but its analysis shows that fraudsters are behind up to 70% of those streams. AI-generated music is a growing problem on streaming platforms. Fraudsters typically generate revenue on platforms such as Deezer by using bots to "listen" to AI-generated songs - and take the subsequent royalty payments, which become sizeable once spread across multiple tracks. The tactic aims to evade detection measures triggered by vast listening numbers for a small amount of bogus tracks. Thibault Roucou, the director of royalties and reporting at the Paris-based platform, said the manipulation of AI-generated music was an bid to "get some money from royalties". "As long as there is money [in fraudulent streaming] there will be efforts, unfortunately, to try to get a profit from it," he said. "That's why we're investing in fighting it, because we know it's not going away and we need to be one step ahead every time." Deezer deploys a tool it says can detect 100% AI-made content from the most prolific AI music models such as Suno and Udio. Deezer said the AI-generated music streamed by fraudsters ranged from fake pop and rap music to artificial mood tracks. The platform blocks royalty payments for streams it has identified as fraudulent. Deezer revealed in April that AI-generated music now represents 18% of all uploads to its platform, or 20,000 tracks per day. The company said it was removing all fully AI-generated content from its algorithmic recommendations. Deezer has more than 10 million subscribers worldwide, while market leader Spotify has 268 million. Roucou said he did not know who was behind the fraudulent streams but the perpetrators appeared to be "organised". The global streaming market was worth $20.4bn last year, according to trade body the IFPI, representing a sizeable target for fraudsters. In its latest global music report, the IFPI said fraudulent streaming steals money that "should be going to legitimate artists". It said generative AI had "significantly exacerbated" the problem. Last year, a musician in the US, Michael Smith, was charged in connection with a scheme to create hundreds of thousands of AI-generated songs and stream them billions of times, obtaining $10m in royalty payments.

How this Parisian music streaming service is fighting AI fraud

Deezer, a French streaming service, said about 20,000 tracks uploaded to its platform each day are completely AI generated. Music streaming service Deezer said Friday that it will start flagging albums with AI-generated songs, part of its fight against streaming fraudsters. Deezer, based in Paris, is grappling with a surge in music on its platform created using artificial intelligence tools it says are being wielded to earn royalties fraudulently. The app will display an on-screen label warning about "AI-generated content" and notify listeners that some tracks on an album were created with song generators. Deezer is a small player in music streaming, which is dominated by Spotify, Amazon and Apple, but the company said AI-generated music is an "industry-wide issue." It's committed to "safeguarding the rights of artists and songwriters at a time where copyright law is being put into question in favor of training AI models," CEO Alexis Lanternier said in a press release. Deezer's move underscores the disruption caused by generative AI systems, which are trained on the contents of the internet including text, images and audio available online. AI companies are facing a slew of lawsuits challenging their practice of scraping the web for such training data without paying for it. According to an AI song detection tool that Deezer rolled out this year, 18% of songs uploaded to its platform each day, or about 20,000 tracks, are now completely AI generated. Just three months earlier, that number was 10%, Lanternier said in a recent interview. AI has many benefits but it also "creates a lot of questions" for the music industry, Lanternier told the Associated Press. Using AI to make music is fine as long as there's an artist behind it but the problem arises when anyone, or even a bot, can use it to make music, he said. Music fraudsters "create tons of songs. They upload, they try to get on playlists or recommendations, and as a result they gather royalties," he said. Musicians can't upload music directly to Deezer or rival platforms like Spotify or Apple Music. Music labels or digital distribution platforms can do it for artists they have contracts with, while anyone else can use a "self service" distribution company. Fully AI-generated music still accounts for only about 0.5% of total streams on Deezer. But the company said it's "evident" that fraud is "the primary purpose" for these songs because it suspects that as many as seven in 10 listens of an AI song are done by streaming "farms" or bots, instead of humans. Any AI songs used for "stream manipulation" will be cut off from royalty payments, Deezer said. AI has been a hot topic in the music industry, with debates swirling around its creative possibilities as well as concerns about its legality. Two of the most popular AI song generators, Suno and Udio, are being sued by record companies for copyright infringement, and face allegations they exploited recorded works of artists from Chuck Berry to Mariah Carey. Gema, a German royalty-collection group, is suing Suno in a similar case filed in Munich, accusing the service of generating songs that are "confusingly similar" to original versions by artists it represents, including "Forever Young" by Alphaville, "Daddy Cool" by Boney M and Lou Bega's "Mambo No. 5." Major record labels are reportedly negotiating with Suno and Udio for compensation, according to news reports earlier this month. To detect songs for tagging, Lanternier says Deezer uses the same generators used to create songs to analyze their output. "We identify patterns because the song creates such a complex signal. There is lots of information in the song," Lanternier said. The AI music generators seem to be unable to produce songs without subtle but recognizable patterns, which change constantly. "So you have to update your tool every day," Lanternier said. "So we keep generating songs to learn, to teach our algorithm. So we're fighting AI with AI." Fraudsters can earn big money through streaming. Lanternier pointed to a criminal case last year in the U.S., which authorities said was the first ever involving artificially inflated music streaming. Prosecutors charged a man with wire fraud conspiracy, accusing him of generating hundreds of thousands of AI songs and using bots to automatically stream them billions of times, earning at least $10 million.

Music streaming service Deezer adds AI song tags in fight against fraud

LONDON (AP) -- Music streaming service Deezer said Friday that it will start flagging albums with AI-generated songs, part of its fight against streaming fraudsters. Deezer, based in Paris, is grappling with a surge in music on its platform created using artificial intelligence tools it says are being wielded to earn royalties fraudulently. The app will display an on-screen label warning about "AI-generated content" and notify listeners that some tracks on an album were created with song generators. Deezer is a small player in music streaming, which is dominated by Spotify, Amazon and Apple, but the company said AI-generated music is an "industry-wide issue." It's committed to "safeguarding the rights of artists and songwriters at a time where copyright law is being put into question in favor of training AI models," CEO Alexis Lanternier said in a press release. Deezer's move underscores the disruption caused by generative AI systems, which are trained on the contents of the internet including text, images and audio available online. AI companies are facing a slew of lawsuits challenging their practice of scraping the web for such training data without paying for it. According to an AI song detection tool that Deezer rolled out this year, 18% of songs uploaded to its platform each day, or about 20,000 tracks, are now completely AI generated. Just three months earlier, that number was 10%, Lanternier said in a recent interview. AI has many benefits but it also "creates a lot of questions" for the music industry, Lanternier told The Associated Press. Using AI to make music is fine as long as there's an artist behind it but the problem arises when anyone, or even a bot, can use it to make music, he said. Music fraudsters "create tons of songs. They upload, they try to get on playlists or recommendations, and as a result they gather royalties," he said. Musicians can't upload music directly to Deezer or rival platforms like Spotify or Apple Music. Music labels or digital distribution platforms can do it for artists they have contracts with, while anyone else can use a "self service" distribution company. Fully AI-generated music still accounts for only about 0.5% of total streams on Deezer. But the company said it's "evident" that fraud is "the primary purpose" for these songs because it suspects that as many as seven in 10 listens of an AI song are done by streaming "farms" or bots, instead of humans. Any AI songs used for "stream manipulation" will be cut off from royalty payments, Deezer said. AI has been a hot topic in the music industry, with debates swirling around its creative possibilities as well as concerns about its legality. Two of the most popular AI song generators, Suno and Udio, are being sued by record companies for copyright infringement, and face allegations they exploited recorded works of artists from Chuck Berry to Mariah Carey. Gema, a German royalty-collection group, is suing Suno in a similar case filed in Munich, accusing the service of generating songs that are "confusingly similar" to original versions by artists it represents, including "Forever Young" by Alphaville, "Daddy Cool" by Boney M and Lou Bega's "Mambo No. 5." Major record labels are reportedly negotiating with Suno and Udio for compensation, according to news reports earlier this month. To detect songs for tagging, Lanternier says Deezer uses the same generators used to create songs to analyze their output. "We identify patterns because the song creates such a complex signal. There is lots of information in the song," Lanternier said. The AI music generators seem to be unable to produce songs without subtle but recognizable patterns, which change constantly. "So you have to update your tool every day," Lanternier said. "So we keep generating songs to learn, to teach our algorithm. So we're fighting AI with AI." Fraudsters can earn big money through streaming. Lanternier pointed to a criminal case last year in the U.S., which authorities said was the first ever involving artificially inflated music streaming. Prosecutors charged a man with wire fraud conspiracy, accusing him of generating hundreds of thousands of AI songs and using bots to automatically stream them billions of times, earning at least $10 million.

Music streaming service Deezer adds AI song tags in fight against fraud

LONDON -- Music streaming service Deezer said Friday that it will start flagging albums with AI-generated songs, part of its fight against streaming fraudsters. Deezer, based in Paris, is grappling with a surge in music on its platform created using artificial intelligence tools it says are being wielded to earn royalties fraudulently. The app will display an on-screen label warning about "AI-generated content" and notify listeners that some tracks on an album were created with song generators. Deezer is a small player in music streaming, which is dominated by Spotify, Amazon and Apple, but the company said AI-generated music is an "industry-wide issue." It's committed to "safeguarding the rights of artists and songwriters at a time where copyright law is being put into question in favor of training AI models," CEO Alexis Lanternier said in a press release. Deezer's move underscores the disruption caused by generative AI systems, which are trained on the contents of the internet including text, images and audio available online. AI companies are facing a slew of lawsuits challenging their practice of scraping the web for such training data without paying for it. According to an AI song detection tool that Deezer rolled out this year, 18% of songs uploaded to its platform each day, or about 20,000 tracks, are now completely AI generated. Just three months earlier, that number was 10%, Lanternier said in a recent interview. AI has many benefits but it also "creates a lot of questions" for the music industry, Lanternier told The Associated Press. Using AI to make music is fine as long as there's an artist behind it but the problem arises when anyone, or even a bot, can use it to make music, he said. Music fraudsters "create tons of songs. They upload, they try to get on playlists or recommendations, and as a result they gather royalties," he said. Musicians can't upload music directly to Deezer or rival platforms like Spotify or Apple Music. Music labels or digital distribution platforms can do it for artists they have contracts with, while anyone else can use a "self service" distribution company. Fully AI-generated music still accounts for only about 0.5% of total streams on Deezer. But the company said it's "evident" that fraud is "the primary purpose" for these songs because it suspects that as many as seven in 10 listens of an AI song are done by streaming "farms" or bots, instead of humans. Any AI songs used for "stream manipulation" will be cut off from royalty payments, Deezer said. AI has been a hot topic in the music industry, with debates swirling around its creative possibilities as well as concerns about its legality. Two of the most popular AI song generators, Suno and Udio, are being sued by record companies for copyright infringement, and face allegations they exploited recorded works of artists from Chuck Berry to Mariah Carey. Gema, a German royalty-collection group, is suing Suno in a similar case filed in Munich, accusing the service of generating songs that are "confusingly similar" to original versions by artists it represents, including "Forever Young" by Alphaville, "Daddy Cool" by Boney M and Lou Bega's "Mambo No. 5." Major record labels are reportedly negotiating with Suno and Udio for compensation, according to news reports earlier this month. To detect songs for tagging, Lanternier says Deezer uses the same generators used to create songs to analyze their output. "We identify patterns because the song creates such a complex signal. There is lots of information in the song," Lanternier said. The AI music generators seem to be unable to produce songs without subtle but recognizable patterns, which change constantly. "So you have to update your tool every day," Lanternier said. "So we keep generating songs to learn, to teach our algorithm. So we're fighting AI with AI." Fraudsters can earn big money through streaming. Lanternier pointed to a criminal case last year in the U.S., which authorities said was the first ever involving artificially inflated music streaming. Prosecutors charged a man with wire fraud conspiracy, accusing him of generating hundreds of thousands of AI songs and using bots to automatically stream them billions of times, earning at least $10 million.

Music Streaming Service Deezer Adds AI Song Tags in Fight Against Fraud

LONDON (AP) -- Music streaming service Deezer said Friday that it will start flagging albums with AI-generated songs, part of its fight against streaming fraudsters. Deezer, based in Paris, is grappling with a surge in music on its platform created using artificial intelligence tools it says are being wielded to earn royalties fraudulently. The app will display an on-screen label warning about "AI-generated content" and notify listeners that some tracks on an album were created with song generators. The company said AI-generated music is an "industry-wide issue." It's committed to "safeguarding the rights of artists and songwriters at a time where copyright law is being put into question in favor of training AI models," CEO Alexis Lanternier said in a press release. Deezer's move underscores the disruption caused by generative AI systems, which are trained on the contents of the internet including text, images and audio available online. AI companies are facing a slew of lawsuits challenging their practice of scraping the web for such training data without paying for it. According to an AI song detection tool that Deezer rolled out this year, 18% of songs uploaded to its platform each day, or about 20,000 tracks, are now completely AI generated. Just three months earlier, that number was 10%, Lanternier said in a recent interview. AI has many benefits but it also "creates a lot of questions" for the music industry, Lanternier told The Associated Press. Using AI to make music is fine as long as there's an artist behind it but the problem arises when anyone, or even a bot, can use it to make music, he said. Music fraudsters "create tons of songs. They upload, they try to get on playlists or recommendations, and as a result they gather royalties," he said. Musicians can't upload music directly to Deezer or rival platforms like Spotify or Apple Music. Music labels or digital distribution platforms can do it for artists they have contracts with, while anyone else can use a "self service" distribution company. Fully AI-generated music still accounts for only about 0.5% of total streams on Deezer. But the company said it's "evident" that fraud is "the primary purpose" for these songs because it suspects that as many as seven in 10 listens of an AI song are done by streaming "farms" or bots, instead of humans. Any AI songs used for "stream manipulation" will be cut off from royalty payments, Deezer said. AI has been a hot topic in the music industry, with debates swirling around its creative possibilities as well as concerns about its legality. Two of the most popular AI song generators, Suno and Udio, are being sued by record companies for copyright infringement, and face allegations they exploited recorded works of artists from Chuck Berry to Mariah Carey. Gema, a German royalty-collection group, is suing Suno in a similar case filed in Munich, accusing the service of generating songs that are "confusingly similar" to original versions by artists it represents, including "Forever Young" by Alphaville, "Daddy Cool" by Boney M and Lou Bega's "Mambo No. 5." Major record labels are reportedly negotiating with Suno and Udio for compensation, according to news reports earlier this month. To detect songs for tagging, Lanternier says Deezer uses the same generators used to create songs to analyze their output. "We identify patterns because the song creates such a complex signal. There is lots of information in the song," Lanternier said. The AI music generators seem to be unable to produce songs without subtle but recognizable patterns, which change constantly. "So you have to update your tool every day," Lanternier said. "So we keep generating songs to learn, to teach our algorithm. So we're fighting AI with AI." Fraudsters can earn big money through streaming. Lanternier pointed to a criminal case last year in the U.S., which authorities said was the first ever involving artificially inflated music streaming. Prosecutors charged a man with wire fraud conspiracy, accusing him of generating hundreds of thousands of AI songs and using bots to automatically stream them billions of times, earning at least $10 million. Copyright 2025 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

Streaming platform Deezer starts flagging AI-generated music

French streaming platform Deezer now flags fully AI-generated music with a "content generated by AI" label, aiming to protect artist royalties. Using in-house detection tech with claimed 98% accuracy, Deezer demonetises such tracks but doesn't remove them. Around 18% of new uploads are AI-made, posing a growing challenge to musicians' earnings.French streaming service Deezer is now alerting users when they come across music identified as completely generated by artificial intelligence, the company told AFP on Friday in what it called a global first. The announcement by chief executive Alexis Lanternier follows repeated statements from the platform that a torrent of AI-generated tracks is being uploaded daily -- a challenge Deezer shares with other streaming services including Swedish heavyweight Spotify. Deezer said in January that it was receiving uploads of 10,000 AI tracks a day, doubling to over 20,000 in an April statement -- or around 18% of all music added to the platform. The company "wants to make sure that royalties supposed to go to artists aren't being taken away" by tracks generated from a brief text prompt typed into a music generator like Suno or Udio, Lanternier said. AI tracks are not being removed from Deezer's library, but instead are demonetised to avoid unfairly reducing human musicians' royalties. Albums containing tracks suspected of being created in this way are now flagged with a notice reading "content generated by AI", a move Deezer says is a global first for a streaming service. Lanternier said Deezer's home-grown detection tool was able to spot markers of AI provenance with 98% accuracy. "An audio signal is an extremely complex bundle of information. When AI algorithms generate a new song, there are little sounds that only they make which give them away... that we're able to spot," he said. "It's not audible to the human ear, but it's visible in the audio signal." With 9.7 million subscribers worldwide, most of them in France, Deezer is a relative minnow compared to Spotify, which has 268 million. The Swedish firm in January signed a deal supposed to better remunerate artists and other rights holders with the world's biggest label, Universal Music Group. But Spotify has not taken the same path as Deezer of demonetising AI content. It has pointed to the lack of a clear definition for completely AI-generated audio, as well as any legal framework setting it apart from human-created works.

Deezer Is Adding Tags to Identify AI-Generated Music

This measure is to help Deezer listeners differentiate between AI and human-created music. Deezer, the French music streaming platform, has come out with a way to curb the increasing threat of AI music profiting from real artists. The platform will now start tagging these AI tracks, making it the first service to do so in an attempt to differentiate between human and AI-generated tracks. In a recent newsroom post, Deezer announced that it's coming out with an AI tagging system. Users should start seeing a banner "AI-generated content" on such tracks to help them learn whether the track they are enjoying is human-made or not. Apart from tagging, Deezer will also not feature AI music editorial playlists or algorithm-based recommendations. On top of that, the platform will start filtering out fraudulent streams from royalty payments. According to Deezer, the reason for this change is, "about 18% of music uploaded each day (over 20,000 tracks!) is now fully AI-generated. While most of these tracks don't go viral, Deezer found that around 70% of their streams are fake, often uploaded to exploit royalty systems." They further added, "For now, AI-only songs make up just 0.5% of all streams on Deezer, but the trend is growing fast,". As AI models are improving every day, the use of AI-generated content has become more prevalent. So, flagging it can be quite helpful for listeners going forward. Hopefully, other streaming platforms like Spotify will also adopt this kind of implementation soon.

Music streaming service Deezer adds AI song tags in fight against fraud

LONDON -- Music streaming service Deezer said Friday that it will start flagging albums with AI-generated songs, part of its fight against streaming fraudsters. Deezer, based in Paris, is grappling with a surge in music on its platform created using artificial intelligence tools it says are being wielded to earn royalties fraudulently. The app will display an on-screen label warning about "AI-generated content" and notify listeners that some tracks on an album were created with song generators. Deezer is a small player in music streaming, which is dominated by Spotify, Amazon and Apple, but the company said AI-generated music is an "industry-wide issue." It's committed to "safeguarding the rights of artists and songwriters at a time where copyright law is being put into question in favor of training AI models," CEO Alexis Lanternier said in a press release. Deezer's move underscores the disruption caused by generative AI systems, which are trained on the contents of the internet including text, images and audio available online. AI companies are facing a slew of lawsuits challenging their practice of scraping the web for such training data without paying for it. According to an AI song detection tool that Deezer rolled out this year, 18% of songs uploaded to its platform each day, or about 20,000 tracks, are now completely AI generated. Just three months earlier, that number was 10%, Lanternier said in a recent interview. AI has many benefits but it also "creates a lot of questions" for the music industry, Lanternier told The Associated Press. Using AI to make music is fine as long as there's an artist behind it but the problem arises when anyone, or even a bot, can use it to make music, he said. Music fraudsters "create tons of songs. They upload, they try to get on playlists or recommendations, and as a result they gather royalties," he said. Musicians can't upload music directly to Deezer or rival platforms like Spotify or Apple Music. Music labels or digital distribution platforms can do it for artists they have contracts with, while anyone else can use a "self service" distribution company. Fully AI-generated music still accounts for only about 0.5% of total streams on Deezer. But the company said it's "evident" that fraud is "the primary purpose" for these songs because it suspects that as many as seven in 10 listens of an AI song are done by streaming "farms" or bots, instead of humans. Any AI songs used for "stream manipulation" will be cut off from royalty payments, Deezer said. AI has been a hot topic in the music industry, with debates swirling around its creative possibilities as well as concerns about its legality. Two of the most popular AI song generators, Suno and Udio, are being sued by record companies for copyright infringement, and face allegations they exploited recorded works of artists from Chuck Berry to Mariah Carey. Gema, a German royalty-collection group, is suing Suno in a similar case filed in Munich, accusing the service of generating songs that are "confusingly similar" to original versions by artists it represents, including "Forever Young" by Alphaville, "Daddy Cool" by Boney M and Lou Bega's "Mambo No. 5." Major record labels are reportedly negotiating with Suno and Udio for compensation, according to news reports earlier this month. To detect songs for tagging, Lanternier says Deezer uses the same generators used to create songs to analyze their output. "We identify patterns because the song creates such a complex signal. There is lots of information in the song," Lanternier said. The AI music generators seem to be unable to produce songs without subtle but recognizable patterns, which change constantly. "So you have to update your tool every day," Lanternier said. "So we keep generating songs to learn, to teach our algorithm. So we're fighting AI with AI." Fraudsters can earn big money through streaming. Lanternier pointed to a criminal case last year in the U.S., which authorities said was the first ever involving artificially inflated music streaming. Prosecutors charged a man with wire fraud conspiracy, accusing him of generating hundreds of thousands of AI songs and using bots to automatically stream them billions of times, earning at least US$10 million.

Music streamer flagging AI generated songs in fight against fraudsters

LONDON -- Music streaming service Deezer said Friday that it will start flagging albums with AI-generated songs, part of its fight against streaming fraudsters. Deezer, based in Paris, is grappling with a surge in music on its platform created using artificial intelligence tools it says are being wielded to earn royalties fraudulently. The app will display an on-screen label warning about "AI-generated content" and notify listeners that some tracks on an album were created with song generators. Deezer is a small player in music streaming, which is dominated by Spotify, Amazon and Apple, but the company said AI-generated music is an "industry-wide issue." It's committed to "safeguarding the rights of artists and songwriters at a time where copyright law is being put into question in favor of training AI models," CEO Alexis Lanternier said in a press release. Deezer's move underscores the disruption caused by generative AI systems, which are trained on the contents of the internet including text, images and audio available online. AI companies are facing a slew of lawsuits challenging their practice of scraping the web for such training data without paying for it. According to an AI song detection tool that Deezer rolled out this year, 18% of songs uploaded to its platform each day, or about 20,000 tracks, are now completely AI generated. Just three months earlier, that number was 10%, Lanternier said in a recent interview. AI has many benefits but it also "creates a lot of questions" for the music industry, Lanternier told The Associated Press. Using AI to make music is fine as long as there's an artist behind it but the problem arises when anyone, or even a bot, can use it to make music, he said. Music fraudsters "create tons of songs. They upload, they try to get on playlists or recommendations, and as a result they gather royalties," he said. Musicians can't upload music directly to Deezer or rival platforms like Spotify or Apple Music. Music labels or digital distribution platforms can do it for artists they have contracts with, while anyone else can use a "self service" distribution company. Fully AI-generated music still accounts for only about 0.5% of total streams on Deezer. But the company said it's "evident" that fraud is "the primary purpose" for these songs because it suspects that as many as seven in 10 listens of an AI song are done by streaming "farms" or bots, instead of humans. Any AI songs used for "stream manipulation" will be cut off from royalty payments, Deezer said. AI has been a hot topic in the music industry, with debates swirling around its creative possibilities as well as concerns about its legality. Two of the most popular AI song generators, Suno and Udio, are being sued by record companies for copyright infringement, and face allegations they exploited recorded works of artists from Chuck Berry to Mariah Carey. Every morning, the NY POSTcast offers a deep dive into the headlines with the Post's signature mix of politics, business, pop culture, true crime and everything in between. Subscribe here! Gema, a German royalty-collection group, is suing Suno in a similar case filed in Munich, accusing the service of generating songs that are "confusingly similar" to original versions by artists it represents, including "Forever Young" by Alphaville, "Daddy Cool" by Boney M and Lou Bega's "Mambo No. 5." Major record labels are reportedly negotiating with Suno and Udio for compensation, according to news reports earlier this month. To detect songs for tagging, Lanternier says Deezer uses the same generators used to create songs to analyze their output. "We identify patterns because the song creates such a complex signal. There is lots of information in the song," Lanternier said. The AI music generators seem to be unable to produce songs without subtle but recognizable patterns, which change constantly. "So you have to update your tool every day," Lanternier said. "So we keep generating songs to learn, to teach our algorithm. So we're fighting AI with AI." Fraudsters can earn big money through streaming. Lanternier pointed to a criminal case last year in the U.S., which authorities said was the first ever involving artificially inflated music streaming. Prosecutors charged a man with wire fraud conspiracy, accusing him of generating hundreds of thousands of AI songs and using bots to automatically stream them billions of times, earning at least $10 million.