Tag: protections

Introducing a New Label for AI-Generated Artist Identities on Spotify

August 11, 2026

An "AI Persona" badge appearing on a dark background

True artist-fan connection can only be built on a foundation of trust and authenticity. In music, that means listeners need to be able to trust that the artist behind the music is who they say they are. That’s more essential than ever in the age of generative AI. 

So this year, we’ve made Artist Identity & Trust one of our very top priorities with the launch of Verified by Spotify, SongDNA, AI Credits, and Artist Profile Protection. Today, we’re announcing another step in our effort to ensure Spotify is the most transparent and trustworthy place to listen to music. 

Listeners have been clear in telling us that they don’t like seeing an artist profile that seems human, only to find out that the persona is AI-generated. That’s why, starting mid-September, you’ll begin to see an AI Persona badge on some artist profiles. The badge signals to listeners that an artist’s identity may be AI-generated and does not represent a real person. Alongside artist profiles that self-disclose as AI Personas, we will also start applying badges to relevant profiles. 

By default, Spotify will not include AI Personas in any editorial or algorithmic recommendations. That means you won’t see any music from AI Personas in your personalized recommendations, unless you follow AI Personas, for example. While we believe all artists have creative choice in determining how they present themselves, Spotify’s programming is focused on elevating music from authentic artists building careers in music.

How it works

Starting today, artists can share that their profile represents an AI Persona through Spotify for Artists. We hope artists will be transparent, so we are giving them the opportunity to disclose, but we won’t rely on self-disclosure alone. 

Spotify will also review artist profiles and identify those whose public identity—the identity an artist presents on their profile, including name and imagery—appears to represent photorealistic AI-generated identities. We’ll start with artists who have met defined audience thresholds, so the labels cover the vast majority of artist profiles that users visit. 

In mid-September, you’ll start to see the AI Persona badge appear on artist profiles (in the banner and About section), in Search, and on track rows across playlists. When listeners tap the badge, they’ll be able to see whether the artist transparently shared that they’re an AI Persona to build trust with potential listeners, or if Spotify had to review and make an informed determination. 

For artist profiles where Spotify’s review team have applied the badge, artists will be notified and given the opportunity to self-disclose or appeal. In the coming months, we’ll also give listeners the ability to report artist profiles they believe represent AI Personas to our review team. We’ll share more details when that’s available.

Although there’s a broad spectrum in how artists use AI as a creative tool, the question of whether a profile represents an actual human is one where Spotify can help make a clear determination. This badge is about the artist’s public identity, not about how the music was made. For more information about how the music was made, we offer AI Credits and SongDNA. With AI credits, we have seen that people are eager to take the opportunity to be transparent and share how they used AI as part of their song’s creative process. We’re hoping for a similar level of self disclosure for AI Personas. 

Building trust and transparency on Spotify

AI Persona badges are part of our broader efforts to make Spotify the most transparent and trustworthy place to listen to music. 

In 2026, we’ve introduced several other features designed to give listeners more transparency about what they’re hearing and who’s behind it. 

    • Verified by Spotify signals to listeners an artist is a real human presenting themselves authentically on the platform. Hundreds of thousands of profiles are already verified, the majority of which are independent artists, representing more than 99% of the artists Spotify listeners actively search. 
    • AI Credits allow artists to disclose to listeners how they used AI in their music creation, with tens of thousands of AI credits submitted daily.
    • SongDNA gives listeners deeper context on the artists and contributors behind a track, helping them discover and fall in love with the human creative process. 
    • Artist Details surfaces artist information based on Spotify’s own platform data, such as career milestones, release history, and touring activity, giving listeners a quick snapshot of an artist’s authentic activity on Spotify.
    • Artist Profile Protection lets artists review and approve releases delivered to Spotify to protect their artist identity and prevent listener confusion about misattributed music. 

In addition to these features, we tune our algorithms to highlight authentic human artists and, based on available signals, strive to not  include spam, slop, or low-effort content in our recommendations. 

We know the music ecosystem is evolving, and so will our approach. We’ll continue to adapt as the landscape changes and as we learn from artists, listeners, and industry partners.

Spotify Strengthens AI Protections for Artists, Songwriters, and Producers

September 25, 2025

Spotify logo

Music has always been shaped by technology. From multitrack tape and synthesizers to digital audio workstations and Auto-Tune, every generation of artists and producers has used new tools to push sound and storytelling forward. 

However, the pace of recent advances in generative AI technology has felt quick and at times unsettling, especially for creatives. At its best, AI is unlocking incredible new ways for artists to create music and for listeners to discover it. At its worst, AI can be used by bad actors and content farms to confuse or deceive listeners, push “slop” into the ecosystem, and interfere with authentic artists working to build their careers. That kind of harmful AI content degrades the user experience for listeners and often attempts to divert royalties to bad actors.

The future of the music industry is being written, and we believe that aggressively protecting against the worst parts of Gen AI is essential to enabling its potential for artists and producers.

We envision a future where artists and producers are in control of how or if they incorporate AI into their creative processes. As always, we leave those creative decisions to artists themselves while continuing our work to protect them against spam, impersonation, and deception, and providing listeners with greater transparency about the music they hear.

This journey isn’t new to us. We’ve invested massively in fighting spam over the past decade. In fact, in the past 12 months alone, a period marked by the explosion of generative AI tools, we’ve removed over 75 million spammy tracks from Spotify.

AI technology is evolving fast, and we’ll continue to roll out new policies frequently. Here is where we are focusing our policy work today:

    • Improved enforcement of impersonation violations
    • A new spam filtering system
    • AI disclosures for music with industry-standard credits

Stronger impersonation rules

The issue: We’ve always had a policy against deceptive content. But AI tools have made generating vocal deepfakes of your favorite artists easier than ever before.

What we’re announcing: We’ve introduced a new impersonation policy that clarifies how we handle claims about AI voice clones (and other forms of unauthorized vocal impersonation), giving artists stronger protections and clearer recourse. Vocal impersonation is only allowed in music on Spotify when the impersonated artist has authorized the usage. 

We’re also ramping up our investments to protect against another impersonation tactic—where uploaders fraudulently deliver music (AI-generated or otherwise) to another artist’s profile across streaming services. We’re testing new prevention tactics with leading artist distributors to equip them to better stop these attacks at the source. On our end, we’ll also be investing more resources into our content mismatch process, reducing the wait time for review, and enabling artists to report “mismatch” even in the pre-release state.

Why it matters: Unauthorized use of AI to clone an artist’s voice exploits their identity, undermines their artistry, and threatens the fundamental integrity of their work. Some artists may choose to license their voices to AI projects—and that’s their choice to make. Our job is to do what we can to ensure that the choice stays in their hands.

Music spam filter

The issue: Total music payouts on Spotify have grown from $1B in 2014 to $10B in 2024. But big payouts entice bad actors. Spam tactics such as mass uploads, duplicates, SEO hacks, artificially short track abuse, and other forms of slop have become easier to exploit as AI tools make it simpler for anyone to generate large volumes of music.

What we’re announcing: This fall, we’ll roll out a new music spam filter—a system that will identify uploaders and tracks engaging in these tactics, tag them, and stop recommending them. We want to be careful to ensure we’re not penalizing the wrong uploaders, so we’ll be rolling the system out conservatively over the coming months and continue to add new signals to the system as new schemes emerge. 

Why it matters: Left unchecked, these behaviors can dilute the royalty pool and impact attention for artists playing by the rules. Our new music spam filter will protect against this behavior and help prevent spammers from generating royalties that could be otherwise distributed to professional artists and songwriters.

AI disclosures for music with industry-standard credits

The issue: Many listeners want more information about what they’re listening to and the role of AI technology in the music they stream. And, for artists who are responsibly using AI tools in their creation processes, there’s no way on streaming services for them to share if and how they’re using AI. We know the use of AI tools is increasingly a spectrum, not a binary, where artists and producers may choose to use AI to help with some parts of their productions and not others. The industry needs a nuanced approach to AI transparency, not to be forced to classify every song as either “is AI” or “not AI.” 

What we’re announcing: We’re helping develop and will support the new industry standard for AI disclosures in music credits, developed through DDEX. As this information is submitted through labels, distributors, and music partners, we’ll begin displaying it across the app. This standard gives artists and rights holders a way to clearly indicate where and how AI played a role in the creation of a track—whether that’s AI-generated vocals, instrumentation, or post-production. This change is about strengthening trust across the platform. It’s not about punishing artists who use AI responsibly or down-ranking tracks for disclosing information about how they were made.

This is an effort that will require broad industry alignment, and we’re proud to be working on this standard alongside a wide range of industry partners, including Amuse, AudioSalad, Believe, CD Baby, DistroKid, Downtown Artist & Label Services, EMPIRE, EmuBands, Encoding Management Service – EMS GmbH, FUGA, IDOL, Kontor New Media, Labelcamp, NueMeta, Revelator, RouteNote, SonoSuite, Soundrop, and Supply Chain.

Why it matters: By supporting an industry standard and helping to drive its wide adoption, we can ensure listeners see the same information, no matter which service they’re listening on. And ultimately, that preserves trust across the entire music ecosystem, as listeners can understand what’s behind the music they stream. We see this as an important first step that will undoubtedly continue to evolve.

*Update: Since sharing our initial approach to AI transparency last fall, we’ve been working to put those principles into practice.

On April 16, we launched a beta feature that allows artists to share how they’ve used AI in their music. Where artists have chosen to disclose through their label or distributor, you’ll see credits for specific contributions like vocals, lyrics, or production in Song Credits on mobile. We’re already seeing tens of thousands of AI credits submitted daily by artists using AI in their creative process.

This is a first step in our long-term commitment to transparency for listeners. Our immediate goal is to give artists who use AI tools creatively a way to share that process with listeners. Because we depend on artist disclosure, the absence of a credit doesn’t mean AI wasn’t used. Not all distributors enable artists to disclose yet, but we intend to expand this more broadly over time.

We know this isn’t a complete solution on its own. Building a truly comprehensive system is a challenge that requires industry-wide alignment, but we didn’t want to wait to get started. That’s why we’re tackling it on parallel paths: adding this information to our Song Credits, while continuing to help lead the development of a broader industry standard for AI labelling that would give consumers consistent information across all services. We’ll keep evolving our approach as the landscape develops.

While AI is changing how some music is made, our priorities are constant. We’re investing in tools to protect artist identity, enhance the platform, and provide listeners with more transparency. We support artists’ freedom to use AI creatively while actively combating its misuse by content farms and bad actors. Spotify does not create or own music; this is a platform for licensed music where royalties are paid based on listener engagement, and all music is treated equally, regardless of the tools used to make it.

These updates are the latest in a series of changes we’re making to support a more trustworthy music ecosystem for artists, for rightsholders, and for listeners. We’ll keep them coming as the tech evolves, so stay tuned.