Spot the Music Bot + Dalle’s Version of Where’s Waldo

Dr. Ryan Ries here, and I have a wild story for you this week.

This isn’t the first time I’ve covered AI music generation topics on the Mission Matrix, but this story is a doozy.

To sum it up: A guy from North Carolina allegedly used AI to create not just one fake band, not just a dozen, but hundreds of thousands of fake songs.

And he didn't stop there.

He then reportedly used bots to stream these AI-generated tunes billions of times, raking in a cool $10 million in the process.

(You can read the full story here).

Now, here's where it gets interesting.

This scheme exposes some serious vulnerabilities in the music streaming ecosystem.

It's already tough for real artists to make a living from streaming royalties, and scams like this only make it harder.

It's frustrating that someone can game the system with AI-created songs and fake streams. It undermines the hard work of genuine artists and manipulates the platforms we all use.

Here’s the positive.

I think this serves as a major wake-up call for the industry to adapt to the AI era and find ways to authenticate and value real engagement.

Hopefully, we’ll see some impactful law changes after this case.

But, as we know, the government normally lags behind innovation.

So, are the streaming services doing anything about this problem?

In short (and from what I could find), no, not really.

Spotify, for instance, does not have a policy against AI-generated content as long as it doesn't violate other policies like impersonation and copyright infringement.

However, both Spotify and Apple Music have taken action against some alleged AI artists and removed certain songs/artists from their platforms.

I suspect we will see some regulations in the near future. In the meantime, let’s talk about how you can tell if music is AI-generated.

How to Spot the Bot

Here are some telltale signs that might indicate you're listening to an AI-generated track:

Sudden Prolific Output

If you come across an artist with an unusually high number of releases, especially if they seemed to appear out of nowhere in 2023, your AI alarm bells should start ringing. Real artists typically build their catalogs over time, while AI can churn out tracks at a crazy pace.

Remix After Remix

AI-generated music often leans heavily on remixes of popular chart tracks. If you notice an artist pumping out remix after remix in various styles (like turning every pop hit into a drum and bass track), you might be dealing with an AI.

Cookie-Cutter Visuals

Take a look at the album artwork and artist biography pictures. If the images look a bit too perfect or slightly uncanny, it could be a sign of AI involvement.

Jack of All Genres, Master of None

AI doesn't specialize like human artists do. If you see an artist jumping between wildly different genres with equal "proficiency," it's worth being skeptical.

My Hot Take

On the one hand, yeah, it's frustrating that someone can game the system with AI-created songs.

It undermines the hard work of genuine artists and manipulates the platforms we all use.

On the other hand, if the music is good and people are ACTUALLY listening to it, does it matter HOW the songs were created?

I've got to admit, there's a (very) small part of me that can appreciate the ingenuity here.

Now, while that wasn’t the case in the story I mentioned at the beginning of this Mission Matrix, I can see a world where people are able to generate genuinely good songs with AI. 

What do you think? 

To me, this story shows that navigating the world with AI can get messy.

How should the music industry respond to the challenge of AI-generated content? Drop me a line — I'm really curious to hear your thoughts on this one.

Until next time,

Ryan Ries

Now, time for this week’s AI-generated image and the prompt I used to generate it.

The “Spot the Bot” section reminded me of those old “Where’s Waldo?” puzzles we all loved. I tried to get AI to generate one, with a robot being our version of Waldo… It was a struggle.

Oh yes... The robot is SO hard to find!

For all of you fantasy football fans, I have some bad news.

I think my newsletter must have inspired too many people to create gen AI fantasy teams and made ESPN change its scraping policy. When I tried to produce the week 2 team results, here’s what I got:

“As of September 17, 2024, Week 2 of the NFL season is still ongoing. The Monday Night Football game has not yet been played, so we cannot calculate the final scores for your fantasy teams.

Please check back after the Monday Night Football game is complete, and I'll be happy to assist you with calculating the Week 2 fantasy football scores.”

AI is making me want to pull my hair out right now, so check back next week, and hopefully, I’ll have some results! I kept telling the system it was Tuesday, so Monday night football had already happened, and it apologized for the error and then gave the same error!

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