Several Christmas playlists on YouTube and Spotify are actually music generated by artificial intelligence programs. These pieces discreetly imitate traditional tunes, which allows them to go unnoticed.
Did you listen to Christmas music during the holidays? You may have been deceived by an AI. A playlist published on YouTube in December 2024, already viewed by 6 million people, is in reality artificial.
At first listen, everything seems ordinary: the songs are imbued with nostalgic melodies and we find the classics that we have heard many times while unwrapping our gifts. However, further analysis – for English speakers – reveals many inconsistencies. The lyrics are regularly distorted, sometimes fictitious, instruments are added and sounds are modified.
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All of these details point to potentially algorithmically generated content. Media 404 looked into these artificial playlists and discovered that they had gradually infiltrated streaming platforms.
AI-generated music more listened to than real artists on Spotify
While quickly browsing the Internet, journalists came across a recent Reddit thread where users denounce the presence of blatantly artificial artists on Spotify. These fake musicians, who appear in Christmas playlists, are making the ordeal of retail workers worse during an already stressful period.
On Spotify, artists such as “Dean Snowfield”, “North Star Notesmiths” and “Sleighbelle” mix alongside true classics of the genre at the heart of popular playlists.
These musicians are distinguished by nearly identical biographies, featuring generic descriptions that purport to pay homage to the creators of the original songs. Their songs are often perceived as clumsily produced, with robotic vocals and artificial melodies.
Note that this AI-generated music is gaining ground and that platforms like YouTube and Spotify seem to have difficulty distinguishing authentic from fake. Without realizing it, we too are beginning to become familiar with these machine-generated works.
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