AI Generated Music Is Hard for Humans to Detect

AI

Deezer reports that around 18% of new tracks uploaded to their platform are AI generated:

“AI generated content continues to flood streaming platforms like Deezer, and we see no sign of it slowing down,” said Aurelien Herault, Chief Innovation Officer, Deezer. “Generative AI has the potential to positively impact music creation and consumption, but we need to approach the development with responsibility and care in order to safeguard the rights and revenues of artists and songwriters, while maintaining transparency for the fans. Thanks to our cutting-edge tool we are already removing fully AI generated content from the algorithmic recommendations.”

Meanwhile, a new study says humans aren’t great at detecting AI generated music:

“The average score was 46%,” O’Donnell reveals. “And for a few genres, especially instrumental ones, listeners were wrong more often than not.” O’Donnell says when he watched people take the test, he noticed that qualities they confidently flagged as AI compositions—fake-sounding instruments, weird lyrics—were not always right.

“Predictably, people did worse in genres they were less familiar with; some did okay on country or soul, but many stood no chance against jazz, classical piano, or pop. Beaty, the creativity researcher scored 66%, while Brandt, the composer, scored 50%.” With just a few text prompts, O’Donnell created music that humans couldn’t pick out of a line-up as AI generated. “A few could have been easily played at a party without raising objections, and I found two I genuinely loved, even as a lifelong musicians and generally picky music person,” he shares.