Apple Music adds optional labels for AI songs and visuals

Apple is asking artists and record labels on its music streaming platform to voluntarily label songs created using AI. The new “Transparency Tags” metadata system for Apple Music was announced yesterday in a newsletter for industry partners, according to Music Business Worldwideand covers four categories, including songs, compositions, illustrations and music videos.

The track tag should be applied when “a significant portion of a sound recording” has been generated by AI tools, while the composition tag covers other AI-generated compositional elements, such as song lyrics. The artwork tag applies to static or animated graphics, but only at the album level. For all other AI-generated visual content, whether standalone or associated with albums, the music video tag must be applied. Multiple transparency tags may be used simultaneously for works that require more than one of these disclosures.

In its newsletter, Apple says its new tags are a “concrete first step” toward industry-wide transparency around AI-generated music, and that labels and distributors “must take an active role in reporting when the content they release is created using AI.”

Apple Music’s tagging system follows other efforts by competing music streaming providers to protect authentic artists from spam and impersonation, and help make AI-generated music easier for users to identify. Spotify is developing a new metadata standard for AI music disclosures with DDEX – a music standards organization that currently lists Apple Music CEO Nick Williamson as a board member. Deezer also made the AI ​​music detection tool it launched last year available on other platforms in January, while Qobuz showed off its own proprietary AI detection system last week.

Unlike Deezer and Qobuz’s proactive detection systems, Apple Music’s transparency tags are entirely optional (for now) and place the responsibility for AI disclosure directly on record labels and music distributors rather than on the platform. Apple even says that the determination of what constitutes AI-generated music and visuals will be left to the discretion of content providers, “in the same way as genres, credits and other metadata”, and that no use of AI will be assumed on works that providers have not tagged.

Honesty policies for other AI labeling solutions have not worked so far. Given the lack of enforcement of Apple Music’s tagging system, I struggle to understand why creators and record labels would be motivated to use it.