Musicians are speaking out against fraudulent artificial intelligence (AI) albums being released under their names, warning fans not to be deceived by the soulless knockoffs.
English folk singer Emily Portman recently alerted her followers after discovering an AI-generated album titled Orca falsely attributed to her on iTunes and YouTube. The fake release used a font nearly identical to her past work and featured song titles that sounded like her style. “It’s so bizarre, it’s kind of like having a light shone into your soul, but on the other hand it’s totally soulless, meaningless AI music,” Portman said, urging fans not to buy it.
Portman filed copyright complaints to remove the fake album, but noted it took Spotify three weeks to act. Other streaming services removed the release more quickly. Spotify later admitted the AI songs were “incorrectly added to the wrong profile of a different artist by the same name.”
Portman, who will release a legitimate album in March, said she wants her real music to reflect her humanity: “I’ll never be able to sing that perfectly in tune. And that’s not the point. I don’t want to. I’m human.”
She isn’t alone. American singer-songwriter Josh Kaufman revealed that fans messaged him about supposed new tracks that were actually AI imitations uploaded under his name. “It was embarrassing and then just kind of confusing,” Kaufman said, though he added most fans recognized the tracks as fake.
Smaller or folk artists appear to be frequent targets of this scam, including Jeff Tweedy of Wilco, Father John Misty, Sam Beam, Teddy Thompson, and Jakob Dylan. The controversy follows an open letter signed by over 200 musicians last year — including Billie Eilish, Katy Perry, and Nicki Minaj — demanding AI developers and platforms stop exploiting their voices and likenesses.
