Grammy-winning singer Arooj Aftab has said musicians are owed compensation when their work is used to train artificial intelligence (AI) models. Her stance on AI compensation was shared through two Instagram stories posted on Tuesday, in which she backed demands from a music-industry trade union. Her core argument is that training an AI system on human-made songs counts as using that work, so artists should be paid now rather than only under future rules.
What Aftab shared and said
In her first story, Aftab shared a post from United Musicians and Allied Workers, a trade union of professionals in the music industry. That post asked for AI-generated music to be labelled at every step, so listeners can tell it apart from human-made tracks. Aftab said AI was using human-made music to make its own work, which affected the musicians whose music it was trained on, and she said future rule-making on AI in music should keep this in mind.
In her second story, she shared a slide calling on streaming platforms to pay human artists directly. The same slide asked that these payments not be extended to creators of AI-generated music. Aftab also said musicians should receive royalties, the payments owed to creators, when their work is used to make new derivative work.
Wider pushback and Spotify's response
The fight against unlicensed AI use of music is not new. More than 13,000 artists, including ABBA's Bjorn Ulvaeus and Radiohead's Thom Yorke, signed a statement in 2024 condemning AI's unlicensed use of human-made music. Over 1,000 musicians, including Kate Bush, released a silent album in protest against the UK changing laws to let AI use copyrighted songs and books for training.
Streaming service Spotify has taken steps of its own. It introduced "Verified for Spotify" labels for creators who are verifiably human, and "AI Persona" badges for creators who make AI music. In a newsletter released on Tuesday, marking a year since those steps were announced, the company said it had removed over 50 million "slop and spam tracks" from people's recommendations. It also said it had verified over 300,000 human creators, more than 70 per cent of them independent artists, and that 99 per cent of user searches were for human-made tracks. These figures are the company's own claims.
What remains open
For now, the union's proposals and Aftab's comments are positions in an ongoing debate rather than new rules. Arooj Aftab's stance on AI compensation adds to a broader push by artists to be paid when their work trains AI, but how such payments would work has not been settled.
Aasan alfaaz mein
Grammy jeetne wali singer Arooj Aftab ka kehna hai ke jin musicians ka kaam AI ko music banana sikhane mein istemal hota hai, unhein paisay milne chahiye. Unhon ne yeh bhi maanga ke AI se bani music ko har marhale par label kiya jaye, takay sunne wale asli aur AI music mein farq kar sakein. Spotify ka kehna hai ke usne 50 million se zyada spam tracks hata diye hain. Yeh abhi bahas ka mamla hai, aur is se musicians ki kamai par asar ho sakta hai.
