Spotify adds'Verified' badges to distinguish human artists from AI Spotify is introducing a'Verified' badge to help users identify when artists on its platform are human, not AI-generated. The world's most-used music streaming service said the'Verified by Spotify' text and green checkmark icon would appear next to artist names when they meet defined standards demonstrating authenticity. This could include having linked social accounts on their artist profile, consistent listener activity or other signals of a real artist behind the profile, the company said, such as merchandise or concert dates. In its blog post, Spotify said more than 99% of the artists listeners actively search for will be verified, representing hundreds of thousands of artists. It said the process would prioritise acts with important contributions to music culture and history, rather than content farms, with the platform rolling out verification and badges over the coming weeks.

Taylor Swift has applied to trademark her voice and appearance in an apparent attempt to protect herself from artificial intelligence impersonations. The pop superstar has lodged three trademark applications in the US - one using a photo of herself on stage during her Eras Tour, and the other two being audio clips of her introducing herself while promoting her last album. AI-generated versions of Swift have cropped up in various ways in recent years - from explicit images to a fake election ad in which she appeared to urge people to vote for Donald Trump. The move comes after actor Matthew McConaughey became the first celebrity to use trademark rules to attempt to protect his voice and image from AI misuse earlier this year . Trademark applications are a relatively new way for celebrities to combat the growing issue of AI rip-offs.

The return of BTS is a big deal. In case you were in any doubt, just look at the frenzy surrounding the South Koreans' comeback. On Saturday, the band will kick off a sold-out, 82-date world tour with a free concert in Seoul, which is expected to be attended by more than 250,000 in-person fans and will be live-streamed on Netflix to more than 190 countries. When the tour wraps up in 2027, BTS are expected to have generated more than $1billion in revenue. Some more outlandish estimates suggest they will eclipse the $2billion haul of Taylor Swift's Eras tour.

Sony removes 135,000 'deepfakes' of its artists' music Music giant Sony Music says it has requested the removal of more than 135,000 songs by fraudsters impersonating its artists on streaming services. The so-called deepfakes were created using generative AI, and targeted some of the company's biggest acts, who include Beyoncé, Queen and Harry Styles In the worst cases, [the deepfakes] potentially damage a release campaign or tarnish the reputation of an artist, said Dennis Kooker, president of Sony's global digital business. The company says the number of songs generated in this fashion is only increasing as artificial intelligence technology becomes cheaper and easier to access. It believes the 135,000 tracks it has discovered to date represents just a percentage of the total uploaded to streaming services. Since last March alone, it has identified some 60,000 songs falsely purporting to feature artists from their roster.

We developed task-optimized deep neural networks (DNNs) that achieved state-of-the-art performance in different evaluation scenarios for automatic music tagging. These DNNs were subsequently used to probe the neural representations of music. Representational similarity analysis revealed the existence of a representational gradient across the superior temporal gyrus (STG). Anterior STG was shown to be more sensitive to low-level stimulus features encoded in shallow DNN layers whereas posterior STG was shown to be more sensitive to high-level stimulus features encoded in deep DNN layers.

Race on to establish globally recognised'AI-free' logo Organisations worldwide are racing to develop a universally recognised label for human-made products and services as part of the growing backlash against AI use. Declarations like Proudly Human, Human-made, 'No A.I and AI-free are appearing across films, marketing, books and websites. It is in response to fears that jobs or entire professions are being swept away in a wave of AI-powered automation. BBC News has counted at least eight different initiatives trying to come up with a label that could get the kind of global recognition that the Fair Trade logo has for ethically made products. But with so many competing labels - as well as confusion over the definition of AI-free - experts say consumers are in danger of being left confused unless a single standard can be agreed on.

A system developed by researchers at the University of Waterloo lets people collaborate with groups of robots to create works of art inspired by music. The new technology features multiple wheeled robots about the size of soccer balls that trail coloured light as they move within a fixed area on the floor in response to key features of music including tempo and chord progression. A camera records the co-ordinated light trails as they snake within that area, which serves as the canvas for the creation of a "painting," or visual representation of the emotional content of a particular piece of music. "Basically, we programmed a swarm of robots to paint based on musical input," said Dr Gennaro Notomista, a professor of electrical and computer engineering at Waterloo. "The result is a cohesive system that not only processes musical input, but also co-ordinates multiple painting robots to create adaptive, expressive art that reflects the emotional essence of the music being played."

From reducing dementia to speeding up recovery after surgery, music is more powerful than you knew. Listening to music can help your brain, research suggests. Breakthroughs, discoveries, and DIY tips sent six days a week. The oldest known musical instruments-- flutes carved from bones --are over 40,000 years old . And humans were likely making music before that, based on fossils showing our ancestors had the ability to sing over 530,000 years ago.

Dancing to the musical beats or creating a variety of rhythmically synchronized music for a given motion is a fundamental aspect of human creativity.

However, existing music datasets suffer from limited size, accessibility, and lack of audio resources.