More than 30 years ago, the music industry adopted a labeling system on albums to alert consumers — and their parents — about explicit lyrics. Something similar could soon be coming for songs that were created with the use of A.I.
A consortium of industry groups, led by the major record companies’ trade organizations, announced a proposal on Friday for two labels that would be affixed to tracks made with some degree of artificial intelligence.
One label, with the capital letters “AI” in white on a black field, would stand for “A.I. generated” and denote that “the entirety or the primary portion of the creative elements” in a song were created by A.I., such as in songs fully created by text prompts.
The other label, with the lowercase letters “ai” in black on a white background, would mean “A.I. assisted” and be for tracks that were “created substantially by humans” but with A.I. used “for some expressive elements.”
The proposal comes as A.I.-generated songs flood streaming services, and as artists and fans have expressed confusion and frustration about the industry’s lack of transparency. In April, the French streaming service Deezer announced that each day as many as 75,000 A.I.-generated tracks — nearly half its daily intake — are uploaded to its system, most of them low-quality slop that are never listened to.
“Fans want to know whether and how generative A.I. has been used in the music to which they listen,” Vikki Oakley, the chief executive of the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry, a global industry trade group, and Mitch Glazier, the chief of the Recording Industry Association of America, said in a joint statement.
“Given how important human artistry and authenticity is to music lovers all over the world,” they added, “these labels will provide an immediately understandable and easily scalable approach to transparency.”
Whether the labels would be adopted as the music groups propose — or with changes after negotiations with digital platforms — was not immediately clear.
Spotify and Apple Music have said they would consider adding labels for A.I.-generated content if record companies and distributors provided that information as metadata; Spotify recently introduced A.I. disclosures within song credits, which may take fans some digging to find.
Information about A.I. use is usually self-reported by artists, and the major distribution services handle thousands of new tracks a day.
In a statement, Graham Davies, the chief executive of the Digital Media Association, a trade group representing major tech platforms, said that more accurate and detailed metadata about A.I. music creation “will strengthen our ability to give fans the transparency they deserve.”
“That information flows best when it travels the entire path from creator to fan,” he added, “and our members rely on industry partners to make that possible.”
The music consortium’s announcement about A.I. labels said music organizations would “work with digital music services, distributors, aggregators and standard-setting bodies on industrywide implementation.”
The other organizations involved in the proposal were the Recording Academy, the group behind the Grammy Awards; the independent groups IMPALA, the American Association of Independent Music and Worldwide Independent Network; SAG-AFTRA, the actors’ union; and Human Artistry Campaign, a coalition of organizations across the entertainment industry that promotes human creativity in an age of A.I.
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