AI-Generated Music Becoming Nearly Impossible to Detect, According to a Deezer/Ipsos Study

According to an Ipsos survey for the streaming platform Deezer, distinguishing music that is 100% generated by artificial intelligence from similar music created by humans is becoming nearly impossible for listeners.

Out of 9,000 respondents, "97% were unable to tell the difference between a piece of music entirely generated by AI and a human-created piece during a blind test featuring two AI tracks and one real track," revealed the French streaming platform.

The study was conducted online from October 6 to 10 across eight countries: the United States, Canada, Brazil, the United Kingdom, France, the Netherlands, Germany, and Japan.

Nearly half of the respondents believe that AI can help them discover new songs, but they are more pessimistic about the implications of AI-generated music.

Specifically, 51% of those surveyed feel that AI will lead to an influx of "lower-quality, more generic songs," and nearly two-thirds (64%) think that artificial intelligence could result in "a loss of creativity in music production," the study highlights.

These results "clearly show that people care about music and want to know if they are listening to a piece created by a human or by AI," stated Alexis Lanternier, CEO of Deezer, in a press release.

Currently, the French company is the only audio platform that systematically identifies tracks fully generated by AI with a note for users.

In January, it reported that one in ten tracks delivered on its site in a day was actually a completely AI-generated track. Ten months later, this figure has risen to "34% of all tracks," amounting to nearly 40,000 per day, notes the company.

Despite this growing influx, these tracks currently account for a very small share of overall listens.

The sudden popularity in June of an AI group on the Spotify platform, The Velvet Sundown, sparked numerous reactions, with their most popular song surpassing three million listens.

Accused multiple times of opacity regarding AI, the Swedish leader announced in September several measures to encourage artists and publishers to be more transparent about the use of AI.