Lorde contacted Spotify about the streaming service’s “About Song” AI feature on Thursday, after the AI shared incorrect information regarding the context of one of her songs.
“I’m going to go out on a limb and say we don’t want this,” Lorde wrote in an Instagram Story.
“About the Song” is an AI tool from Spotify that is currently in beta, and was released to a limited number of users in February. The tool mines third-party sources to gather additional information and context about individual tracks. In Lorde’s case, according to her screenshot, the AI appears to have been pulled from themusic.com.au, where she wrote that on her recent Ultrasound tour, the singer “turned Current Affairs into a full-fledged performance piece, stripping down to her underwear while a dancer pours water over her stomach so that the song plays like the shower scene she talks about on stage.”
“Not only is this inaccurate (not the song I did it in) but reducing the song to AI-generated meaning directly at the source seems to limit free interpretation,” Lorde wrote. “At least make it possible for artists to opt out please.”
Lorde’s comment reflects the sensitivity that still surrounds artificial intelligence among artists and creatives in the entertainment industry. SZA, for example, said Identification card Earlier this year, she felt “at war over AI.”
“I’m not against pop girls. I’m not against R&B girls,” SZA said. “I’m against anti-intellectualism and doing things too easily. The kind of information mix that my human experience provides, an AI couldn’t even be asked to mess with it.”
This problem reflects the widespread information problems faced by technology companies’ AI data mining tools. Google’s AI briefs, for example, faced similar criticism with their release in April New York Times A report details that its AI answers take data from a wide range of sources, including news sites and Facebook posts, leaving at least some room for error. Ultimately, these AI mining tools will only be as good as the data they feed them.
When asked for comment, a company spokesperson confirmed that “the text has been removed.”
“‘About Song’ is an experimental feature that provides information sourced from external sources,” the spokesperson said. “We are continuing to improve it based on artist and fan feedback.”
