Spotify has finally done what it should have done years ago, launching a new initiative that will give listeners more transparency regarding whether artists are AI-generated.
It’s called an AI Persona Badge and will go live from mid-September. The platform has also said they are reviewing profiles that appear to “represent photorealistic AI-generated identities.” They will apparently begin that process with artists that meet a certain audience threshold. Those that appear to be AI-generated will be notified and afforded the opportunity to self-disclose or appeal.
It should be noted that this merely covers AI-generated artists, rather than AI-generated tracks. That is a separate, though related issue. “Although there’s a broad spectrum in how artists use AI as a creative tool, the question of whether a profile represents an actual human is one where Spotify can help make a clear determination,” the company has said in a statement.
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Clearly, Spotify is having to play catch-up in the race to get on top of the problem of AI-generated slop. Back in April, Deezer claimed it was the first platform to transparently tag AI-generated music and revealed it was dealing with over 75,000 AI tracks per day.
Meanwhile, Tidal has announced that they are blocking royalties for any tracks that they identify as 100% AI-generated, and Bandcamp has completely blocked any music which is “wholly or in substantial part” AI-generated. Indeed, in the last week they have even thrown Boy George and his AI-assisted tracks off of their library.
By comparison, Spotify has been notably slow at getting to grips with AI music. The AI-generated ‘Sienna Rose’ was able to upload ten albums between September and December last year, a superhuman work rate that no one at Spotify raised an eyelid at before questions began to be asked about the veracity of the music. ‘Rose’ was even able to get three songs on Spotify’s Viral 50 before Christmas 2025.
The new measure should – in theory – prevent a future Sienna Rose, or imposters pretending to be existing artists, such as ‘King Lizard Wizard’ who uploaded a whole tranche of tracks to Spotify last year after a certain Aussie psyche rock band defected from the platform.
The AI Persona Badge comes in the wake of previous measures Spotify has put in place, such as AI credits and Song DNA features that are supposed to flag up AI content.
Those, however, rely on artists voluntarily admitting to the use of AI, which is little use when dealing with nefarious actors that are simply uploading album after album of slop in an attempt to cream off royalties.
