Luminate, the data company whose figures feed Billboard's charts, announced on August 25 that its CONNECT platform can now identify fully AI-generated songs and artists. The company says it has already flagged thousands of items in its database, but customers cannot see the tags yet; they are due to appear later in the year.
There will be three labels. A recording confirmed as wholly machine-made gets "AI Generated", an artist confirmed as fully synthetic gets "AI", and an artist Luminate has individually screened and cleared gets "Human". The company stresses that a missing label proves nothing, because it has not run its whole catalogue through the process. It is starting with heavily streamed releases from 2023 onwards, and artists and labels will be able to contest a wrong tag.
Detection works in two steps: an in-house data-science model picks out likely AI releases from streaming data and metadata, and audio-signature matching then confirms them before a tag is applied. Luminate also plans to take in the AI labels streaming services attach to tracks and attribution data supplied by AI music companies at the moment of generation, and pitches the whole system as a global clearing house. Its own FAQ is more cautious than the launch: it does not yet use streaming-platform labels, and it is only in talks with the AI companies. Chief executive Rob Jonas called the framework a starting point and said no single organisation can solve the problem alone.
The announcement landed on a busy day for AI and charts. ARIA changed its code the same day to keep wholly AI-generated tracks off Australia's charts and awards, following the labels' chart principles that IFPI adopted in late July, after an AI-assisted dance cover of a Madonna song climbed its local singles chart. Billboard also pledged to say which songs in its charts and coverage use AI, naming Luminate's tool as one it expects to rely on.
Billboard stopped at identification rather than an eligibility rule, and Luminate has not said whether its flags will decide what can chart. Deezer, Apple Music and Spotify have each set out their own AI tagging or badging plans this year.
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