It has become nearly impossible for listeners to tell the difference between music made by artificial intelligence and tracks created by humans, according to new research.
A global survey of 9,000 people by polling firm Ipsos, carried out for France-based streaming platform Deezer, found that 97% of respondents could not distinguish between AI-generated and human-made music.
The results come as a country song featuring an AI-generated male voice, Walk My Walk by Breaking Rust, reached number one on Billboard's digital sales chart for country songs this week - the first time an AI track has topped the US charts.
More than half of those surveyed said they felt uncomfortable not being able to tell the difference between human and AI-created music. Over half (51%) believed that AI would lead to more low-quality tracks appearing on streaming platforms, while almost two-thirds feared a decline in creativity.
Deezer chief executive Alexis Lanternier said the results showed that "people care about music and want to know if they’re listening to AI or human-made tracks".
The platform said AI-generated content has surged this year. In January, one in ten tracks streamed each day on Deezer was fully AI-generated; by October, that figure had climbed to more than one in three, or nearly 40,000 tracks daily.
Eighty percent of respondents said they wanted all AI-generated songs to be clearly labelled. Deezer is currently the only major music-streaming platform that systematically labels fully AI-generated content for users.
The issue came to wider attention in June when a band called The Velvet Sundown went viral on Spotify, later confirming it was entirely AI-generated. The group’s most popular song has been streamed more than three million times.
Spotify has since said it will encourage artists and publishers to sign up to a voluntary industry code to disclose the use of AI in music production.
The Ipsos survey was conducted between 6 and 10 October across eight countries: Brazil, Britain, Canada, France, Germany, Japan, the Netherlands and the United States.
Source: AFP
