Award-winning singer Emily Portman received a message last month from a fan who lauded her new album, declaring that “English folk music is in good hands.”
While seemingly complimentary, the Sheffield-based artist was left perplexed.
Following a link shared by the fan, Portman discovered what appeared to be her latest release. “But I didn’t recognise it because I hadn’t released a new album,” she explained.
“I clicked through and discovered an album online everywhere – on Spotify and iTunes and all the online platforms.”
“It was called Orca, and it was music that was evidently AI-generated, but it had been cleverly trained, I think, on me.”
The album’s 10 tracks, with titles like Sprig of Thyme and Silent Hearth, bore an “uncannily close” resemblance to titles she might choose. Portman, a BBC Folk Award winner in 2013, found the situation “really creepy.”
Upon listening, the voice, purportedly hers, sounded slightly off but emulated “a folk style probably closest to mine that AI could produce.” The instrumentation, too, was eerily similar.
While AI-generated music is prevalent online, it typically appears under fictitious names or imitates prominent stars. However, it rarely surfaces on an artist’s official streaming pages.
A growing trend has emerged, with established, though not superstar, artists becoming targets of fake albums or songs that unexpectedly appear on their Spotify and other streaming service profiles. Even deceased musicians have had AI-generated “new” material added to their catalogues.
Portman remains uncertain about who uploaded the album under her name and their motivation. She was falsely credited as the performer, writer, and copyright holder. The listed producer, Freddie Howells, was unfamiliar to her, and no online trace of a producer or musician with that name exists.
As for the music itself, while it convinced some fans, the absence of genuine human creativity rendered it “vacuous and pristine,” according to Portman.
“I’ll never be able to sing that perfectly in tune. And that’s not the point. I don’t want to. I’m human.”
Days later, another album materialized on Portman’s streaming pages. This time, less effort was made to imitate her. It was “20 tracks of instrumental drivel,” she stated. “Just AI slop.”
After filing copyright complaints to have the albums removed, Portman stated that the episode has reinforced her “belief in the importance of real creativity, and how it moves people.”
“I hope that the AI music didn’t do that for people,” she continued. “Although I did get an email from somebody saying, ‘Where’s Orca? That’s been on repeat.’ So people have been hoodwinked by it.”
The uploader of the albums would have received any royalties, but no song on Orca exceeded 2,000 plays on Spotify, limiting the revenue to approximately $6 (£4.40) per track.
According to music industry analysts Luminate, approximately 99,000 songs are uploaded to streaming services daily, often through distribution services that request the artist’s details.
Inaccurate information leading to a song being incorrectly listed under an existing artist’s name necessitates a complaint from the artist or their label for removal.
Portman noted that while some platforms promptly removed Orca, Spotify took three weeks, and she has yet to regain control of her Spotify artist profile.
In a statement, Spotify asserted, “These albums were incorrectly added to the wrong profile of a different artist by the same name, and were removed once flagged.”
Portman disputed this claim, pointing out that although another singer with the same name exists on Spotify, the albums did not resemble her work and have not been added to her profile.
She characterized the “distressing” experience as “the start of something pretty dystopian,” while emphasizing the lack of legal safeguards for artists.
Portman suspects independent artists are targeted due to the stronger protections and greater power star names possess to expedite the removal of fraudulent releases.
Similar to Portman, New York-based musician, producer, and songwriter Josh Kaufman, who contributed to Taylor Swift’s Folklore album, was alerted to fake new material by his listeners.
“I just started getting messages from fans and friends about some new music I just released, and how much of a shift it was [stylistically],” he recalled.
“I think most people were hip to the fact that it was somebody else just using my artist profile as a way to release some strange music that clearly was computer generated.”
In Kaufman’s case, his identity was used to release a track called Someone Who’s Love Me, which resembled “a Casio keyboard demo with broken English lyrics.”
“It was embarrassing and then just kind of confusing,” he added. “This [music] is the thing that we do, right? This is the signature of our soul, and that someone else can walk in there and just have access like that…”
He is among several Americana and folk-rock artists who have had fake tracks posted using their names in recent weeks, seemingly from the same source.
Others include Wilco frontman Jeff Tweedy, J Tillman (now known as Father John Misty), Sam Beam (aka Iron & Wine), Teddy Thompson, and Jakob Dylan.
All the releases featured the same style of AI artwork and were credited to three record labels, two with apparently Indonesian names. Many listed the same name as a songwriter: Zyan Maliq Mahardika.
That name has also been credited on other songs mimicking real US Christian musicians and metalcore bands.
Spotify reported that it had flagged the issue with the distributor and removed these tracks as they “violated our policy against impersonating another person or brand.”
The company added that it would “remove any distributor who repeatedly allows this type of content on our platform.”
Kaufman compiled a playlist of all the tracks he could find and gave it a derogatory name. “It’s more fun to laugh about it than to feel bad about it,” he said. “But it is disconcerting that this can happen.”
He found it strange, as a musician and producer who generally goes “under the radar,” to be targeted. “Why not go for someone big?” he asked. “If you’re trying to accumulate royalties of some kind.”
He has no idea where any royalties may have gone. “I don’t even know what the enemy is, to be honest,” he said. “Is it a computer? Is it a person sitting somewhere developing this music to just mess with someone?”
One thing is certain: he wants companies like Spotify to be more proactive in preventing fraudulent music from appearing on their platforms.
Tatiana Cirisano from media and technology analysis company Midia Research says AI is “making it easier for fraudsters” to fool listeners, who are also more “passive” in the algorithmic age.
She believes that bad actors posing as real-life artists hope their fraudulent tracks will “rack up enough streams” – hundreds of thousands – to earn them a substantial payout.
“I would think that the AI fakes are targeting lesser-known artists in the hopes that their schemes fly under the radar, compared to if they were to target a superstar who could immediately get Spotify on the line,” she noted.
However, streaming services and distributors are “working hard” and improving at detecting fraud, she stressed, “ironically, also by using AI and machine learning!”
“I think it’s clear to everyone that every stakeholder must do their part,” she said. “But it’s complicated.”
When a new song appeared last month on US country singer Blaze Foley’s verified artist page, it came as a big surprise to Craig McDonald, owner of Foley’s record label, especially since Foley died in 1989.
The “AI schlock,” as McDonald termed it, was clearly not in Foley’s “Texas singer-songwriter from the heart” style.
“Blaze had a songwriting talent but along with that talent, a total authenticity,” he said. “As they say, three chords and the truth. And this clearly wasn’t it.”
McDonald, who runs Lost Art Records, is concerned that AI dupes could damage the credibility of artists like Foley, particularly for those unfamiliar with their sound.
What would Foley have thought of all this? “Blaze might have liked it because the photo that accompanied it really slimmed him down, it took off about 30lb and also gave him a modern haircut,” McDonald laughed.
“But he would also say, ‘I want that 10% of a penny that Spotify is collecting. Send that my way’.”
Considering how the streaming era has already significantly impacted many artists’ incomes, Emily Portman says this affair has felt like a “very low blow.”
In addition to addressing her faceless AI impostor, she is currently recording her first (real) solo album in 10 years, which, unlike AI, requires time, money, and profound personal creativity. She estimates it will cost at least £10,000 to produce, covering the expenses of musicians, production, release, and promotion.
However, she enthuses, the result will be something genuine and human.
“I’m really looking forward to bringing some real music into the world!”
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