97% of people “can’t tell the difference” between AI and human-made music, study finds

A new study conducted by French music streaming service Deezer and research firm Ipsos has found that 97% of people “can’t tell the difference” between AI and human-made music.

The “first-of-its-kind” study surveyed around 9,000 people from eight different countries around the world, asking participants to listen to three tracks to determine which they believed to be fully AI-generated.

97% of those respondents “failed”, Deezer reports, with over half of those (52%) reporting that they felt “uncomfortable” in not knowing the difference. 71% also said that they were shocked at the results.

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The study also found that 55% of respondents feel “curious” about AI music, with 66% of those surveyed saying they would listen to fully AI-generated music at least once, out of curiosity.

Despite the figures, only 19% said that they feel like they could trust AI; another 51% said they believe the use of AI in production could lead to low-quality and “generic” sounding music.

“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,” says Alexis Lanternier, CEO of Deezer.

“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.”

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Deezer has recently made efforts to crack down on AI-generated music on its platform. In January, the streaming service reported that around 10,000 AI-generated tracks were being submitted to Deezer daily, equating to around 10% of all music uploads.

By September, Deezer revealed that those figures had risen, then receiving over 30,000 “fully AI-generated” tracks every day, up by almost 20% since January.

The company is currently “the only streaming platform to detect and clearly tag 100% AI-generated content”, using an AI music-detection tool to crack down on “synthetic tracks”.

Read the full study by Deezer and Ipsos here.

Gemma Ross is Mixmag's Associate Digital Editor, follow her on Twitter