Artists are telling their fans not to listen to artificial intelligence (AI) knockoff albums of themselves that strangers are creating. “I’ll never be able to sing that perfectly in tune, but I don’t want to, I’m human,” English folk singer Emily Portman warned her followers online.
“The eagle-eyed among you might have just thought that I’ve just sneaked out a new album, and I’m just here to tell you that I haven’t,” Portman said in a video posted to Instagram. “It’s called ‘Orca,’ it’s just appeared on iTunes and YouTube.”
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“And the font of the title is kind of identical to my previous album, and all of the song titles are very plausibly some of the titles that I might use — it’s so weird,” the singer continued.
Portman added, “My friends tell me these kinds of things are going to happen more and more.”
“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,” she said.
The singer went on to urge her fans not to pay attention to the AI album, adding, “definitely don’t buy it.”
“I’m going to try to have it taken down,” Portman said, before revealing that she will be coming out with a real album in March that will feature “the contents of my actual soul.”
Portman added that the fake AI album situation “seems to be the world that we are operating in right now — but the real one’s coming soon.”
“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,” Portman told BBC News, which added that the singer has filed copyright complaints to get the fake AI albums taken down.
New York-based singer songwriter Josh Kaufman, meanwhile, told the outlet, “I just started getting messages from fans and friends about some new music I just released, and how much of a shift it was [stylistically].”
“It was embarrassing and then just kind of confusing,” Kaufman said of the AI music depicting his work, adding that he believes “most people were hip to the fact that it was somebody else just using my artist profile as a way to release some strange music that clearly was computer generated.”
The fraudsters behind the AI tracks appear to be targeting folk or smaller artists, which also include Wilco frontman Jeff Tweedy, Father John Misty, Sam Beam, Teddy Thompson, and Jakob Dylan — perhaps believing that they may not as easily notice the deceptive scheme.
While it remains to be seen how various streaming platforms will handle the fraudulent AI music, Portman told BBC News that “some” have removed “Orca” quickly, while it took Spotify three weeks to address the issue.
“These albums were incorrectly added to the wrong profile of a different artist by the same name, and were removed once flagged,” Spotify said in a statement.
As Breitbart News reported, last year, more than 200 musical artists — including popular names like Billie Eilish, Katy Perry, and Nicki Minaj — signed an open letter urging AI developers, tech firms, and digital platforms to “cease” the use of AI, saying the technology will end up replacing human artists if they continue.
Alana Mastrangelo is a reporter for Breitbart News. You can follow her on Facebook and X at @ARmastrangelo, and on Instagram.
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