🔗 Share this article Advocacy Group Asserts to Have Extracted Countless of Audio Files from Spotify A digital rights group has claimed to have harvested a vast number of tracks from Spotify and is preparing to release them publicly. Potential Boost for Artificial Intelligence Training Industry experts said the seeming leak could aid artificial intelligence firms searching for material to train their models. An entity called Anna’s Archive reported it had obtained 86 million music files from Spotify and 256 million entries of metadata such as artist and record names. The company, which carries more than 100 million songs, stated that the breach did not constitute its entire catalog. “We have identified and disabled the malicious user accounts that were involved in unlawful scraping,” said a Spotify spokesperson. The Swedish company, which has more than 700 million users worldwide, further explained that an inquiry into unauthorized access found a third party collected public metadata and employed illicit tactics to circumvent DRM protections. Group's Stated Goal and Concerns The streaming service does not think the music acquired by Anna’s Archive has been made public yet. Anna’s Archive, which is known for offering links to pirated books, wrote in a blog it wanted to create a ‘preservation archive’ for music. They asserted the music files represented 99.6% of all music listened to by Spotify users and would be distributed via ‘torrents’, a method of sharing large digital files online. “Naturally the service doesn’t have all the music in the world, but it’s a great start,” commented Anna’s Archive, which frames its purpose as “safeguarding humanity’s knowledge and culture”. Model Development and Copyright Debate Ed Newton-Rex for defending artists’ rights, said the breached music would probably be utilized for training AI models. “Training on illegally sourced material is unfortunately widespread in the AI industry, so this stolen music is highly likely to end up training AI models,” he said. The group's website alludes to a large online archive, a vast online archive of pirated books that has reportedly been used by Meta to train its AI models. The co-founder of an AI startup wrote on LinkedIn that individuals of the public could in principle “create their own private free equivalent of Spotify”. He added it could also allow tech companies to “educate models on modern music at a large volume”. Intellectual property law has become a battleground between creatives, authors and creatives on one side and tech giants on the other. Policy Considerations and Responses In the UK, creative professionals have protested against a ministerial suggestion to allow AI companies utilize protected work without permission unless the rights holder opts out. Almost every respondent to a government call for evidence on the proposal has backed artists’ apprehensions. The secretary of state for science, innovation and technology informed parliament this month there was “little consensus” on the matter, noting that ministers would “use the time to get this correct”. The administration has committed to make regulatory plans on AI and copyright by March 2025.