A.I. Music Is Already Here. To Protect Human Artists, the Record Industry Proposes New Labels, Like Those for Explicit Lyrics

ADVERTISEMENT

Top music industry leaders calling for greater transparency in the age of artificial intelligence shared a new proposal to clearly label songs created entirely or in part using A.I.

Proponents say the labels—which would look and function similarly to the parental advisory sticker, first introduced more than 35 years ago to indicate tracks with explicit lyrics—are meant to protect the ingenuity of human artists while giving listeners a full understanding of the art with which they are interacting.

“Fans want to know whether and how generative A.I. has been used in the music to which they listen,” Vikki Oakley and Mitch Glazier, respective CEOs of the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry and the Recording Industry Association of America, say in a joint statement. “Given how important human artistry and authenticity is to music lovers all over the world, these labels will provide an immediately understandable and easily scalable approach to transparency.”

One design, an upper-case “AI,” would indicate a song is “A.I.-generated,” meaning “the entirety or the primary portion of the creative elements of the recording” was made by the technology. This includes A.I.-generated lead vocals or key instrumental performances. The other label, a lower-case “ai,” would indicate a song is “A.I.-assisted,” meaning it was “created substantially by humans and expresses human creativity,” but still used generative A.I. for some “expressive elements.”

Making songs with A.I. tools is getting easier, and many people are experimenting. In April, the French streaming platform Deezer reported that 44 percent of new uploaded music was A.I.-generated, amounting to some 75,000 tracks per day. That same month, Apple Music executives estimated that more than one-third of newly uploaded tracks were made by A.I. Though these songs accounted for less than 1 percent of peoples’ listening, Billboard’s Kristin Robinson reported, some tracks have broken through into the mainstream, raising concerns that A.I. music is siphoning revenue—and stealing the spotlight—from human musicians.

A number of controversies reported in recent weeks have made these concerns material. Musicians and producers in Australia wonder whether one of the country’s current top-charting songs, a cover of “Like a Prayer” that has racked up more than 35 million streams on Spotify, was actually made with generative A.I. Experts say the track’s “highly compressed” audio is a telltale giveaway.

“This is a very … impressive vocal performance if it was delivered by a human but if it’s not, that brings in really worrying questions around what we value any more in terms of human expression,” Sam Whiting, a senior research fellow at RMIT University’s school of media and communication, tells the Guardian’s Caitlin Cassidy.

Owen Lyman-Schmidt, one-half of the folk group Makeshift Hammer, writes in Philadelphia Magazine how he discovered a few years ago that recordings of his band’s music had been stolen by another “artist” on Spotify, and slightly sped up or slowed down. Those counterfeit tracks, he says, had thousands more streams than the originals, which Lyman-Schmidt attributes to “fake listeners,” or A.I. bots that inflate streaming numbers in order to generate extra revenue.

And last year, a fake band called Velvet Sundown eclipsed 1.4 million monthly listeners on Spotify with A.I.-generated music, images and backstories. For some musical experts, their popularity offered an intriguing perspective on the anonymity of A.I. music-making.

“Ghost artists have been part of music culture for generations, and A.I. is only the newest tool in that lineage,” Ben Camp, associate professor of songwriting at the Berklee College of Music, told Berklee Now’s Tara Bellucci in 2025.

It is not clear whether the proposed A.I. labels will be adopted or mandated by any streaming platforms or distributors.

“This initiative ensures that creativity, authorship, and artistic intent remain at the center of every song,” Harvey Mason Jr., CEO of The Grammys, says in a statement. “Giving artists the ability to tell that story strengthens trust and supports a more sustainable future for music.”