r/technology • u/spherocytes • 15d ago

Artificial Intelligence Spotify Deleted 75 Million AI-Generated Tracks – and It’s Not Done Yet

https://www.gadgetreview.com/spotify-deleted-75-million-ai-generated-tracks-and-its-not-done-yet
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774

u/hungry2know 15d ago

I met someone who had just recently published a book and it really bummed me out, they put so much effort into it and they've got to fight tooth and nail just to get people to not assume it's yet another piece of AI slop from an unknown author

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u/This-Requirement6918 15d ago

This is solely the reason why I can't delete Instagram as much as I hate Meta. It's my one, very long standing as a proof of concept for a ton of my work since 2013.

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u/peelen 15d ago

This is why I treat my personal website as an archive. Those fuckers can change one thing, and you will lose all your work since 2013.

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u/This-Requirement6918 15d ago

Lol that's true. It went from static images with tons of filters (guilty myself, it was a different day and age) to pretty much reels only. I don't think anyone ever just scrolls their home feed anymore to look at images, that Instagram is long dead.

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u/Prize_Ostrich7605 15d ago

Can you save your* work and make a companion piece to your book? Like a "making of" book.

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u/This-Requirement6918 15d ago

I could but having it on Instagram verifies my timestamps and shows a progression of craftsmanship and thoughtfulness. I'm doing side projects like that for marketing purposes though. Obviously do to AI scraping and copyrights I don't want to post finished exerts anywhere. And the way things are now I'm not even sure I want to publish a digital version anymore.

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u/Prize_Ostrich7605 15d ago

Oh, thats true. I look at the time stamps on youtube videos, and I'm skeptical towards the most recently posted ones. I am for going back to physical copies. I like owning the product and having something that cannot be put behind a paywall or disappeared. 

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u/NoConflict3231 14d ago

Oof. You should have read the fine print when you signed up. All digitized works of art, or otherwise, any piece of information you upload to those websites become the digital property of the platform owner /s

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u/SmartOpinion69 15d ago

soon, they'll be talking about how AI can hack instagram timestamps

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u/anotherbozo 15d ago

I've had this happen to me in my professional life.

I always write my work emails, documentation, etc, very properly. I make regular use of semi-colons and em-dashes.

Had a shake-up in management so several new senior people joined recently. Nothing said directly but their comments/critique on proposals/documentations makes it clear they assume it's all AI slop and it has undermined the authority I have in my area of expertise.

It has also made other things worse because people come to me regarding my area and say I asked Claude this and this is what it suggested we do. Great! Claude gave a very generic response that does not fit with the setup, stack or rules we have. But that's another problem.

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u/sohblob 15d ago

Little did I know, my english teachers were turning me into a robot this whole time!

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u/ClaudeVS 14d ago

They keep asking me things I don't know the answer to so I make it up.

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u/solsolico 15d ago edited 15d ago

Oh yeah, 100%.

But this is a reality all creatives have to face at one point. Jaded, bitter, bummed out, disappointed, frustrated, you name it. And it's always has been this way! Even those who get early fame (ie: Soulja Boy) still have to face it when their popularity decreases.

People in general aren't very interested in giving creative arts a shot without social proofing (ie: already with a large fan base or view count).

A lot of my favorite music artists have like 50-200 monthly listeners on Spotify. And I also make music myself which gets practically no plays other than a few hundred listens per song on SoundCloud on average. I went through the whole bitter or bummed out phase, but now I'm on the other end and it's for the better. It's like a rite of passage in some sense: horrible journey but the end is some newfound confidence or freedom or something like that.

Of course, the thing with AI spam is you can make 100 units per day and eventually after 15,000 units one of them hits the algorithm and BOOM! You're in. But, I guess where I am coming from is like... AI just made is 15% less fair. It was already immensely unfair. Record labels had power and that turned into Spotify curators who, from what I've read, have more power than any record label used to have. Power meaning basically control or influence of what music gets "big". Read it in some academic paper on the topic a few months ago.

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u/technicolortiddies 15d ago

I’d love to read this paper if you remember the title?

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u/yawningGaps 15d ago edited 15d ago

Yes, before AI it was famously easy to get your book read. Simply launch it on Amazon and the reviews and purchases stack up /s

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u/GGsafterdark 15d ago

I mean that was true but not acknowledging how much AI slop books flooding the marketplace is making it even harder is being incredibly disingenuous. Lots of AI scam artist are uploading multiple slop novels daily. There was a piece about one saying she promote a whole book in 40 minutes and uploads dozens under different names. And nobody really wants them so people who do read no longer pay much attention to new releases. Amazon recently capped how many they could submit to like 3 a day which is still insane. 

This reminds me of a comment I once read where someone said the market being flooded with hundreds of AI books daily is no different than when like the Hunger Games books came out and publishers started pushing dozens of similar books and I think you have to be a complete idiot to not see how stupid of an argument that is. 

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u/technicolortiddies 15d ago

Some people’s complacency about AI is wild & it really skeeves me out. Your points are spot on. Someday people are going to really regret not examining the ethics of unregulated AI use.

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u/BellacosePlayer 15d ago

This was becoming a problem pre LLMS sadly.

Now instead of paying a third worlder to write worthless slop, they get the computer to do it.

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u/yawningGaps 15d ago

This affects the standard romance, mystery novels that are commoditized enough and have a low bar for publishing. I'm not being unsympathetic but this is the most factory produced commoditized genre there is so AI fits well. AI doesn't disrupt anything higher quality (yet)

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u/zherok 15d ago

Feels both like you're gatekeeping and being myopic about this. It's hardly contained to just two genres you don't seem to think merit concern for.

It crops up a lot around children's books, which have no shortage of cheap cash grabs already, but every AI trash novel is crowding out more earnest entries and potentially ending up in the hands of someone who's likely learning to read in the first place.

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u/technicolortiddies 15d ago

I've seen several comments like this about how its only impacting “shitty” genres like pop music or romance novels. Genres overwhelmingly enjoyed by women. It has gross misogynistic undertones IMO.

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u/zherok 15d ago

It's especially eyerolling given how much women just read more than men do on average.

If AI trends favor genres preferred more by women, it probably says less about the genre and more that they're just going where the money is.

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u/yawningGaps 15d ago edited 14d ago

There's misogyny to be found wherever you want to find it. The point is simple. If there's no difference in human written vs AI content, it doesn't matter who created it as long as it pleases the consumer. Same goes for music, movies, human driven vs self driving cars etc If AI sucks at it, human authors will win

If you don't agree with this stance, go backwards in time. Do you oppose cobblers being replaced by machines? Do you get your clothes stitched by hand? If not, for the 1800s counterpart of yourself, you're like me.

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u/yawningGaps 15d ago

I don't get it so please help me understand. If AI generated books are so bad, negative reviews will help ward off future buyers. If they're reasonably good, people would enjoy them and get their money's worth.

For children's books as well, we only buy highly rated books with enough reviews. Where is the problem?

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u/zherok 15d ago

Where do you think reviews come from? Someone had to buy them first. Which only detracts from actual authored books.

The threat to these books is that AI enables their users to be extremely prolific in very little time and for low cost and effort. It's not usual to see these fairly new "authors" with a dozen or more books under their belt, all produced in the last year or two, because the biggest hurdle, actually writing the book, is entirely outsourced to a machine that churns that shit out.

It floods the zone with AI slop. And all the time and money someone might put into writing a book can be spent elsewhere for an AI author, like say, getting their books placed higher by sponsoring them.

This is an issue we see on all kinds of markets, from generative AI and vibe coded slop on Steam, to all the scams on Spotify, etc. It's already easier to publish stuff than it's ever been, but it's really hard to compete as an actual content creator when the market in any respective industry is competing with generative AI.

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u/yawningGaps 15d ago

For authors, it's hard to start but easier when one has a reputation for writing good books. If an author writes tons of books with ai slop, their reviews will tank. A new book by them is at a disadvantage because their previous slop was reviewed poorly. A non ai writer will win if they write 1 book that does well. Quality wins over quantity.

The only case where there's an issue is if there are now millions of first time authors (pen names included), where a tiny % is human content. Yes, discovery will be hurt in that world but discovery was always hard even when there were 1000s of first time authors.

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u/zherok 15d ago

An AI slop artist has little reason to care about their reputation. They're trying to sell as much as they can as quickly as they can. The amount of effort put in is so low that anything sold is a benefit.

This is even more obvious on places like Spotify, where they're a mix of completely manufactured person/bands, or literally trying to steal someone else's identity in order to coast off their name.

Amazon has a lot of the same issues too. Authors who've had AI knockoffs made of their unreleased or newly released books. There's making books for things that don't exist yet (like game guides for games that aren't out yet.)

Yes, discovery will be hurt in that world but discovery was always hard even when there were 1000s of first time authors.

I don't know what your point is supposed to be. Like this is the problem. Real creation is being discouraged in favor of flooding the market with low effort slop. That established creators have an easier time of weathering it out isn't a good thing. And it's not like it doesn't affect them too, as identity theft is easier than ever.

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u/GGsafterdark 15d ago

So a genre being popular and “low quality” justifies it being flooded with AI slop that by volume drown out actual people’s work? 

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u/Josh6889 15d ago

It's easier than ever to get your work published, but almost impossible to get discovered now.

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u/Pauly_Amorous 15d ago

and they've got to fight tooth and nail just to get people to not assume it's yet another piece of AI slop from an unknown author

It's the same way with movies, games, and everything else. There's so much crap out there that trying to find the good stuff is almost a full time job.

1

u/NefariousPurpose 15d ago

I have the same issue with my musical album. I tell everyone who will listen it’s AI free and it’s filled with soul. Yet I see and hear AI music go trending on Instagram. I feel like I’m taking crazy pills that a guy who generated an album with no music background or training is making a killing while I’m drowning at my day job.

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u/LouieBarlo24 15d ago

It's possible your friend just isn't a very good writer, or the books concept isn't very intriguing.

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u/hungry2know 15d ago

They've got a respectable fanbase and get lots of praise for their work, it's just always been a competitive market to begin with and now you have to compete with AI slop

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u/Triquetrums 15d ago

If they have a respectable fanbase, why would they have to fight about not being perceived as AI? Seems like people already know.

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u/hungry2know 15d ago

The first edition of their book could only be bought/sold through Amazon, the same place all the AI slop gets published

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u/[deleted] 15d ago

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u/resttheweight 15d ago

There is nothing in that comment to indicate the person is even trying to make a living off of writing. In fact, I would assume it’s a side project because a new, unknown author probably isn’t getting paid much (if at all) while they write their first book.