YouTube to Label AI-Generated Songs Across Its Platforms: Listeners ‘Want Transparency’

YouTube will label AI-generated songs across its main website and YouTube Music, the latest service to publicly mark tracks as not produced by humans.

“Generative AI is opening up new ways for artists to create, experiment, and share music,” YouTube said in a blog post on Wednesday. “As these tools evolve, our listeners have told us they want transparency when they’re hearing an AI-generated track.”

The labels began rolling out across YouTube Music on Wednesday, and it will soon expand to the main YouTube platform. The markers will apply to songs YouTube, through its own detection tools and those made by its music partners, deems were “created primarily using generative AI.”

YouTube’s pivot comes as several music streaming services have promised to label tracks made either primarily by AI or through some level of AI assistance. Apple Music said in August it would add “Made by AI” labels to songs later this year, just after Spotify said it would label the profiles of artists who appear to be AI-generated as “AI Personas.” Tidal has also promised to label AI music and ban those tracks from accruing royalties.

A collection of groups representing musicians and the music industry at large — including the RIAA, IFPI, the Grammys and SAG-AFTRA — also banded together over the summer to advocate for a new labeling program to indicate whether a song was produced with AI, urging them to use “AI-Generated” or “AI-Assisted” indicators.

“Fans want to know whether and how generative AI has been used in the music to which they listen,” International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI) CEO Vikki Oakley and Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) chairman and CEO Mitch Glazier said in a statement.