Apple Music will soon launch labels on songs created with artificial intelligence, the company said in an email sent out to industry partners on Thursday.
In the email, obtained by The Hollywood Reporter, the streaming service said that AI music labels will come “later this year,” though Apple Music didn’t disclose a specific launch date.
The new labels come months after Apple Music launched transparency tags back in March, available for record labels and music distributors to disclose when content uploaded was “materially generated using AI.”
With the upcoming AI labels set to make those tags visible to Apple Music labels, “content providers will be required to include AI Transparency Tags in any instance where AI was used to create a material portion of the content, including tracks that are AI platform generated,” Apple Music said. “We define AI-platform-generated content as anything that is primarily derived from a generative AI service.”
Apple Music didn’t include any details on how the requirements will be enforced.
Apple Music’s announcement comes weeks after an RIAA and IFPI-led initiative called upon the streaming services to add AI labels to the platform in a manner similar to how explicit tracks are disclosed. Apple’s not the only major streaming service starting to implement more rigorous policies around AI content. Earlier in August, Spotify announced that the service would soon start labeling AI artists on the platform, and the company said those artists would not be included in editorial or algorithmic recommendations. Spotify’s new labeling does not technically label the songs themselves but rather the profiles attached to them.
For Apple Music, this is just the latest policy shift as the company looks to address AI and the concerns of fraud and streaming manipulation that comes with it. As The Hollywood Reporter first reported in January, the company also doubled its penalty fees on those caught engaging in streaming fraud, with Apple Music head Oliver Schusser acknowledging the proliferation of AI content was a factor in the decision.
Schusser subsequently told Billboard that over a third of its new monthly uploads were AI-generated songs. The actual usage around AI songs, however, was less than 1 percent.
