Spotify, like pretty much every other digital platform, has been grappling with a torrent of low-quality AI-generated content flooding its streaming service.
The deluge has resulted in cheap-and-fast AI-generated music infiltrating algorithmic playlists and even charting. The slop has led to artists — including dead musicians — being impersonated by AI-powered squatters.
“The low-effort content you see where it’s mass-produced, it’s mass uploaded, it’s AI slop… we’ve removed over 75 million spammy tracks in the last year,” Spotify executive Sam Duboff recently told the Australian Financial Review, adding that AI has “taken existing spam tactics and taken them to a new level.”
Yet, as Spotify fights to keep its platform from being strangled by AI slop, it’s also moved to incorporate multiple AI features, like AI playlists and Spotify’s AI “DJ,” into its platform. And this week, one of Spotify’s AI features made for a frustrating situation for a top artist.
In February, Spotify launched a feature called “About the Song,” an AI-powered summary feature designed to draw on “third-party sources to surface interesting details and behind-the-scenes moments” about a given song and the artists behind it. In its announcement, the company described the feature, which is still in beta, as a way to bring “stories and context directly into your listening experience.”
But it shouldn’t come as a surprise that artists aren’t happy with having their life’s work woefully misrepresented by ill-informed AI.
On Thursday, the singer Ella “Lorde” O’Connor took to Instagram to share a screenshot of the “About the Song” summary of one of her songs. In the screenshot, the AI feature can be seen declaring that “on her Ultrasound World Tour, Lorde turns Current Affairs,” a song off of O’Connor’s most recent album, “into a full-on performance piece, stripping down to underwear while a dancer pours water over her stomach so the song plays out like the shower scene she talks about on stage.” According to a blurb at the bottom of the summary, it drew information from the Australian outlet The Music, which reviewed O’Connor’s tour.
But according to O’Connor’s Instagram story, this isn’t true — that performance happens in her show, but in a different song. There was an inaccuracy in The Music’s review, and that made its way into Spotify’s AI summary.
“Not only is this inaccurate (not the song I did that in),” O’Connor wrote in the caption of the Instagram story, “but reducing a song to an AI-generated meaning right at the source feels like it limits free interpretation [in my opinion]. At least make it possible for artists to opt out please.”
“I’m gonna go out on a limb,” the musician added, “and say we don’t want this.”
In a statement, Spotify told Rolling Stone that “we built ‘About the Song’ because fans want to dig into the stories behind the music. It’s still in beta.”
“The info comes from articles across the internet, and when something’s off, we move fast to fix it, like we did here,” the streamer added. “Getting it right matters to us.”
It’s the latest example of a digital platform attempting to walk the careful line between fighting off low-quality AI material and incorporating AI into its platform where it can. But judging by its latest stumbles, Spotify is seriously struggling to find that line.
More on AI and music:Spotify Caught Doing Something Unbelievably Ghoulish With AI
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“The Lord of the Rings: The Hunt for Gollum,” will de-age actors using AI, the actor and director Andy Serkis confirmed to Variety.
“There’s a little bit of de-aging for some of the characters and machine learning is part of the process,” Serkis, who is both directing the new film and reprising his famous role as Gollum, told Variety.
AI is an incredibly contentious topic in Hollywood. Some studios, like A24, have leaned into generative AI. Others in the industry, from actors to directors and writers, have lambasted the tech, with many fearing that AI will be used to replace industry jobs or simply result in lower-quality work. As the tension between the pro-AI and anti-AI — or perhaps AI-resigned — factions deepen, the industry and its leaders, Serkis included, are publicly grappling with the technology and what it means for a key creative industry.
In addition to Serkis, returning actors from past films include Elijah Wood as Frodo, Ian McKellen as Gandalf, and Lee Pace as Thranduil — all of whom are markedly older than when the original “Lord of the Rings” trilogy and the prequel franchise “The Hobbit” were filmed. Beyond de-aging, though, Serkis said that “at present,” there are no other plans to use AI in the making of the new movie.
“We’re not creating AI shots in our movie, every shot is created in a traditional way,” said Serkis. “One of the things actually that I really wanted to do with this film was to bring back all of the great filmmaking skills, from miniatures to prosthetics and marry them up, because that’s my taste.”
Serkis didn’t nix the idea of using AI altogether. He noted that Peter Jackson, who famously directed the previous live-action movies in the celebrated franchise, worked with the software engineer Stephen Regelous to develop the AI-powered special effects software known as MASSIVE back in the early 2000s.
“When you think about it, in the original ‘Lord of the Rings’ films, Peter created MASSIVE, which was a program which allowed thousands of orcs to all have their own individual mindset,” said Serkis. “So that is a brilliant example of an incredible use of AI.”
He added that AI can be a “valuable” creative tool “as long as it’s not exploitative and as long as it’s not harming anybody or defaming anybody or telling mistruths.”
“When it becomes exploitative and people are not remunerated for the work that they’ve done, or it’s used in nefarious, or mean-spirited or pornographic ways, then of course, that’s terrible and we’ve only brought it upon ourselves,” he added. “I’ve said this before and I mean it — we are the parents of AI, and we have to be good parents and teach AI well. And if we teach AI well, then it can help us across many industries.”
As The Tab noted, many Lord of the Rings fans responded positively, drawing a line between machine learning-infused virtual effects software and generative AI tools that churn out text, audio, and imagery.
“AI is perfect for de-aging,” wrote one commenter. “It should get a complete and utter free pass for that. Having an artist sit and de-age someone must be a horrific chore. Let them work on something fun instead.”
“Every single VFX tool these days uses AI for some part of the processing,” added another. “This isn’t generative AI.”
Other famous filmmakers’ AI stances, meanwhile, haven’t received the same warm reception from fans.
More on AI and movies:Film Community Aghast as Martin Scorsese Extolls AI Startup, Says He Now Uses AI for Storyboards
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