Lorde is calling out Spotify over a new feature that uses AI to give context to the song playing on the streaming service.
The “About the Song” feature, which is currently in beta, was released earlier this year and gathers information from third-party sources to give details on a particular song.
“Hey Spotify, I’m gonna go out on a limb [and] say we don’t want this,” Lorde said in a post on Instagram Stories where she shared a screenshot of the feature.
In the screenshot, Lorde’s song “Current Affairs” was playing, and the “About the Song” feature pulled from themusic.com.au to give details.
“On her Ultrasound World Tour, Lorde turns Current Affairs into a full-on performance piece, stripping down to underwear while a dancer pours water over her stomach so the song plays out like the shower scene she talks about on stage,” read the AI summary on Spotify.
Lorde added, “Not only is this inaccurate (not the song I did that in) but reducing a song to an AI generated meaning right at the source feels like it limits free interpretation [in my opinion]. At least make it possible for artists to opt out please.”
Spotify has already removed the text from Lorde’s song, with Pitchfork sharing a statement from the streamer where they said, “We built ‘About the Song’ because fans want to dig into the stories behind the music. It’s still in beta. The info comes from articles across the internet, and when something’s off, we move fast to fix it, like we did here. Getting it right matters to us.”
