Musicians warn AI impersonators are fueling ‘world’s easiest scam’

In an artificial intelligence-driven world, musicians have voiced concerns over the growing crisis of AI impersonation, leading to violation of artists’ integrity.

These AI-generated tracks are increasingly appearing on the artists’ official profiles without their consent.

To make things worse, these tracks use “pristine” AI-developed vocals and instrumentation which are trained on a musician’s previous work to imitate their specific styles.

Musicians like Emily Portman and Paul Bender have been dealing with the issues related to AI impersonation.

Emily, British folk musician, has shockingly come across her new but fake album, although she had not released any new one since 2022.

Moreover, she also discovered some AI-generated music based on her songs, which was streaming on various platforms including Apple Music and Spotify.

“I just felt really uncomfortable and disturbed that people could be going to my profile … and then think ‘wow, what’s this?’”, she said.

Similarly, Paul Bender also discovered the fraudulent copies of his songs. The four “bizarrely bad” AI-produced songs had been added to Bender’s band, The Sweet Enoughs.

“You just say: ‘Yes that’s me’ … and upload a song to whoever’s profile. It’s the easiest scam in the world,” he said.

The artists have argued that the music industry has failed to implement basic security measures, including two-factor authentication.

According to Ipsos study, the scam has prevailed in the industry that all listeners cannot distinguish AI-generated tracks from real songs.

While discussing financial motives, Dougie Brown of the industry representative UK Music said, “The reason that music was uploaded under her (Portman’s) name was essentially to make sure that they could gain royalties from (it).”

California has implemented robust legislation to protect artistic integrity and against imitation. However, the UK lacks in deepfake laws, thereby making independent artists susceptible to “limited copyrights” guardrails.