YouTube Labels AI-Generated Songs Across Its Platforms: Listeners "Want Transparency"

YouTube Labels AI-Generated Songs on Its Main Website and YouTube Music, the Latest Service to Publicly Flag Tracks as Not Human-Made. In a blog post Wednesday, YouTube said, "Generative AI opens new ways for artists to create, experiment with and share music." As these tools evolve, our listeners have told us […]

YouTube tags AI-produced songs on its main website and YouTube Music, the latest service to publicly flag human-produced songs.

"Generative AI opens up new ways for artists to create, experiment and share music," YouTube said in a blog post on Wednesday. As these tools have evolved, our listeners have told us they want clarity when they hear AI-generated music. Related Stories Mia Goth slams Instagram's 'incomprehensible' decision to post AI-altered selfies online

The tags were rolled out across YouTube Music starting Wednesday and will soon roll out to the main YouTube platform. The flags apply to songs that YouTube detects through its own detection tools and those created by its music partners, which it thinks were "primarily created using artificial intelligence." Popular in Variety

YouTube's pivot comes as several music streaming services have promised to tag songs that were created primarily by AI or through some level of AI assistance. Apple Music announced in August that it would add "AI-generated" tags to songs later this year, just after Spotify said it would label artist profiles that appear to have been generated by AI as "AI people." Tidal has also promised to label AI music and prevent those songs from receiving royalties.

A series of groups representing musicians and the music industry at large — including the RIAA, IFPI, Grammys and SAG-AFTRA — banded together this summer to support a new tagging program to indicate whether a song was produced with artificial intelligence, asking them to use "AI-Generated" or "AI-Assisted" markers.

"Fans want to know if and how artificial intelligence has been used in the music they listen to," Vicki Oakley, CEO of the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI) and Mitch Glazier, president and CEO of the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), said in a statement.