YouTube Music has started labeling songs made with generative AI, and listeners will see the label on the player page. Apple Music has announced its own “Made With AI” labels but has not shipped them, and Apple has only said they are coming later this year.
YouTube announced the rollout on Wednesday, as reported by TechCrunch. Tapping the label opens more information on the role AI played in the track, including composition and vocals, and the labels also extend to the main YouTube app. YouTube built the system with music partners and its own detection tools.
YouTube Music sorts songs into three AI categories
Partners using YouTube can declare AI use under one of three designations:
- Fully Gen AI applies to tracks entirely generated by AI.
- Partly Gen AI applies to works where artists used AI-generated components and added their own live elements.
- No Gen AI applies to tracks edited with pitch-correction tools such as Auto-Tune.
YouTube is taking a disclosure approach and has not set blanket restrictions. AI involvement alone does not make a track ineligible for monetization. YouTube is also experimenting with AI music creation through Dream Track, a tool that lets select creators generate soundtracks with AI versions of participating artists’ voices.
Apple Music’s labels will come from tags that labels and distributors already supply
Apple introduced AI Transparency Tags in March, and on August 20 it told industry partners that those tags will appear to listeners as Made With AI labels later this year. Providers must tag content whenever AI created a material portion of it, across artwork, tracks, compositions and music videos. We covered both the August announcement and the original tags.
Apple has not given a launch date for the labels and is not removing AI songs from the service, and Apple Music VP Oliver Schusser told Billboard in April that Apple still relies heavily on creators to disclose their own AI use.
Schusser also said more than a third of monthly uploads to Apple Music are fully AI-generated, while AI music makes up less than 0.5 percent of listening. Our report on that gap has the full numbers.
Deezer and TIDAL go beyond disclosure
Deezer labels the AI-generated music it detects, excludes it from algorithmic recommendations and editorial playlists, and withholds royalties from fraudulent streams. It is also working on an option that lets users filter out AI music. TIDAL labels recordings it identifies as entirely AI-generated, lets listeners disable them and excludes them from royalty attribution. Spotify has AI labels and a music spam filter.
Deezer reported in July that it was receiving nearly 90,000 fully AI-generated tracks every day.
