Musicians are getting really tired of this AI clone ‘bullshit’

This is how musicians, producers, and others in the industry are describing the relentless spread of AI clones. Of course, AI fakes aren’t new, but as the scammers have gotten more brazen, artists are responding with increasing furor.

We got a taste back in 2023 with multiple AI Drake tracks. But, in the last two years, the problem has gotten worse. Everyone from Beyoncé, to experimental composer William Basinski have had fake songs, likely generated by AI, appear to be streaming next to their names. And this week King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard found itself the latest target. Frontman Stu Mackenzie responded with anger, but also resignation, telling The Music, “we are truly doomed.”

Spotify has taken steps to address the issue, formalizing its policy against impersonation and removing 75 million spam tracks from its service. But the scale of the problem and the way the current system functions have made it difficult to rein in. Deezer says that 50,000 AI-generated tracks are uploaded to its library per day, accounting for more than 34 percent of the music it ingests.

Bad actors take advantage of the fact that music isn’t uploaded directly to Spotify and several other streamers; instead, it goes through a third-party distribution service like DistroKid. It’s unclear what, if any, screening is in place to ensure that someone uploading a song is who they claim to be. (DistroKid did not respond to a request for comment.)

This is how the seemingly AI-generated reggaeton song wound up on the Spotify page of William Basinski, an artist who specializes in ambient pieces built around the sounds of colliding black holes, crumbling tape loops, and shortwave radio broadcasts. “It’s total bullshit,” he told noti.group. “Luckily, my label and distributors keep an eye on these idiocies… What a mess.”

The response from Luke Temple of Here We Go Magic, whose dormant band was reactivated by AI impostors, was similar. Here We Go Magic haven’t released new music since 2015, but after an AI track made its way onto the band’s Spotify page, Temple told NPR that, “it is so awful.” Similarly, when an AI-generated song called “Name This Night” appeared on the Spotify page for the band Toto in July, guitarist Steve Lukather called it “shameless” in a statement to Ultimate Classic Rock.

Now, it’s possible some of these fakes aren’t AI, but AI makes it a hell of a lot quicker and easier to crank them out. While Suno is designed to ignore artist-specific prompts, it’s still easy to generate entire songs with just a few words.

Breaking Rust is not a clone of a specific artist, but Blanco Brown has accused the creator of modeling it on his vocals. Brown told the AP about someone texting him to let him know that “somebody done typed your name in the AI and made a white version of you. They just used the Blanco, not the Brown.”

Brown’s manager, Ryan McMahan, took to LinkedIn, saying, “AI can run a formula. It cannot recreate Blanco’s life experience that he pulls from. It cannot recreate the humanity, the conviction, or the lifetime of emotions that shaped his artistic voice.”

Breaking Rust generated attention by climbing to the top of the Billboard Country Digital Song Sales chart, resulting in misleading headlines about AI topping the country charts. But this is not the Country Streaming Songs or Hot Country Songs charts. The Song Sales chart measures things like iTunes purchases, and since hardly anyone actually buys songs on iTunes anymore, “Walk My Walk” was able to hit the top with only 3,000 purchases. It’s possible that whoever is behind the song simply bought their way to the top.

Solomon Ray, an AI gospel creation, enjoyed similar chart success and spurred backlash. Christianity Today said Ray “has no soul,” a sentiment echoed by Christian artist Forrest Frank, who said on Instagram that, “AI does not have the Holy Spirit inside of it… It’s really weird to be opening up your spirit to something that has no spirit.”

While Solomon Ray does not appear to be a direct clone, there is a real person, Solomon Ray, who is also a singer and a worship leader. Ray (the real one) told Christianity Today, “How much of your heart are you pouring into this? If you’re having AI generate it for you, the answer is zero.”

In addition to composing with AI, some are trying to capitalize on the growing furor. A producer named Haven went viral after not-so-subtly suggesting that a song with AI-manipulated vocals was an unreleased Jorja Smith track. Of course, the vocals were not actually Smith’s; they were processed using Suno, and the track was removed from streaming services.

Harrison Walker (the man behind Haven) tried to cash in, rerecording the song and even trying to enlist Smith for a remix. Now, Smith and her label FAMM are demanding royalties from Haven. In a statement on Instagram, FAMM said that “creators are collateral damage in the race by governments and corporations towards AI dominance.”

The United Musicians and Allied Workers (UMAW) has made no secret about where it stands, calling AI music “exploitation.” Organizer Joey La Neve DeFrancesco told noti.group that “AI has given Spotify and the major labels the ability to fully cut out human artists and the royalties due to them. The streaming giant and the major labels have already cut deals with AI music companies.”

While some of the biggest labels like Warner are warming up to generative AI companies, musicians have found an ally in iHeartRadio. Company president Tom Poleman said on Instagram that “music is a uniquely human art form; creativity, storytelling, and soul that no algorithm can truly replicate.” He pledged that the company would “never play AI-generated music with synthetic vocalists pretending to be human,” and “never use AI-generated on-air personalities or podcasters.” “Sometimes you have to pick a side, and we’re on the side of humans,” he concluded.

Holly Herndon is more comfortable with AI than most musicians, having used it extensively, including on her album Proto. But even she has warned artists to be wary of exploitation. On an episode of The Most Interesting Thing in A.I., she said she brought many of her concerns around training data and artists’ rights to some AI companies and “was blown away that they just weren’t really thinking through this issue, they didn’t think people would be upset about it.”

DeFrancesco says that, “It’s clear that we need regulation to force streaming services to identify AI content and to remove it from streaming royalty pools.” The United Musicians and Allied Workers is pushing for Congress to pass The Living Wage for Musicians Act, which it says would “protect artists from corporate AI exploitation,” by creating a new royalty paid directly to musicians, by streaming platforms that “would only be paid out to human artists.”

For now, the onus is on the artists and their fans to be vigilant. Because, just like videos and photos, music needs to be approached with skepticism in the age of AI.