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It's always a great day when your favorite pop stars call out rubbish technology, and Lorde is on a roll. Last week, Lorde voiced her disdain for the "fucked up" Ray-Ban Meta AI Glasses at Madrid's Mad Cool Festival. Now, she's coming for Spotify's new About The Song feature that summarizes a song's context and spews out incorrect facts in order to make the art seem more compelling, thus tricking you into spending more time on the app. Yesterday, she posted about the inaccurate info that accompanies her song "Current Affairs."
The erroneous AI summary reads as follows:
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.
"Hey Spotify i'm gonna go out on a limb n say we don't want this," she wrote in an Instagram story. "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 imo. At least make it possible for artists to opt out please."
The About The Song feature, which Spotify announced this past February, aims to summarize stories "from third-party sources to surface interesting details and behind-the-scenes moments."
There are many layers to be upset with here. It replaces important editorial work with AI-generated summaries that are often inaccurate or lack nuance. It feeds an insatiable appetite for frictionless intimacy with artists, encouraging listeners to mistake an accumulation of often dubious facts for a deeper understanding of the music. As a result, it reinforces the misguided idea that art is best appreciated through endless context rather than through the experience of the work itself. And, honestly, it's just tacky.
Check out Lorde's post below.
English (US) · 