Research finds 97% of listeners can't tell the difference between AI-generated and human-made music

New research has found a majority of listeners are unable to distinguish music created by artificial intelligence (AI) from human-made music.

In a study conducted by polling firm Ipsos for streaming platform Deezer, 9,000 people across eight countries were surveyed.

97% of respondents could not tell the difference between music made by humans and tracks made by AI.

Upon learning the results, 71% of respondents were surprised and just over half felt uncomfortable by not being able to tell the difference.

51% of respondents said they believe AI will lead to the creation of lower-quality music on streaming platforms. The same percentage said they think AI will play a significant role in music creation in the next ten years.

Almost two-thirds (64%) said they believe AI could lead to a loss of creativity in music production. 70% of respondents expressed concern over AI's impact on the livelihood of artists.

73% said it would be unethical for companies to use copyrighted music to train AI models or generate new music, and 69% said they believe payouts for AI-generated music should be lower than for human made music.

The survey also showed overwhelming support (80%) for the labelling of AI-generated music.

Deezer claims to be the only streaming platform to detect and clearly tag 100% AI-generated content.

Deezer also revealed around 50,000 fully AI-generated tracks are uploaded to the platform daily, thus accounting for over a third of all daily uploads.

"The survey results clearly show that people care about music and want to know if they’re listening to AI or human made tracks or not," said Deezer CEO Alexis Lanternier.

"There's also no doubt that there are concerns about how AI-generated music will affect the livelihood of artists, music creation and that AI companies shouldn’t be allowed to train their models on copyrighted material."

The research comes after news that the song 'Walk my Walk' by Breaking Rust reached number one on Billboard's Country Digital Song Sales chart.

The track, and its artist, are entirely AI-generated. Billboard admitted it is just one of at least six AI-generated songs to chart in the past few months.

In September, Spotify released new policies embracing AI use in music while promising to combat "spam" and "slop." The new rules allow AI-generated music accounts to continue posting on the platform while encouraging (but not mandating) said accounts to label their work as involving AI.

Spotify has faced public backlash for allowing activity from accounts such as Velvet Sundown, an artist account whose music, lyrics, visuals and stories are entirely AI-generated. Velvet Sundown's top song has over 3.1 million listens on Spotify.

Similarly, Xania Monet is a fully AI-generated account posting R&B music that has accumulated over 17 million total streams. Billboard estimated Monet's songs generated over €42,800 in less than two months.