Hello,
I've been a Pandora user for quite some time and recently a station of mine played a track by this "artist:"
https://www.pandora.com/artist/aria-sai/ARJP2fcxP6X6n9Z
I investigated the "artist" via external channels and found that it is not an actual person, but an AI generated fictitious entity posing as a person.
I do not know what Pandora's official policy is regarding AI slop, so let me briefly point out why this content is detrimental to your service.
While some people object to the content on the grounds that it is computer generated, I do not have a problem with this fact. I have listened to electronic music for a very long time and find the use of computers in music generation to be a very positive innovation that benefits both artists and listeners.
My problem with this content is that it is deceptive and created in bad faith. If the music were simply created by an artist using an AI voice synthesizer for the vocals, that would be totally acceptable. But instead of doing this, the creators of this music have chosen to obscure their identity and instead falsely claim that music they used a computer to generate was created by a non-existent computer-generated entity in an attempt to mislead listeners into emotionally attaching to this entity by exploiting their psychological sentiments which have been created through prior experiences with actual human artists.
It is clearly a bad-faith exploit, the sole purpose of which is to artificially elevate the popularity of this inexpensively computer-generated content to increase play counts and revenue intake from the licensing fees that Pandora pays to real artists for their content.
Tolerance of this behavior is detrimental to the service because Pandora exists to connect listeners with artists and musical content, and if Pandora is playing fake, low-quality, computer-generated slop instead of something an artist spent time and energy to create, then both the artists who create content and the listeners who consume their content are harmed because, instead of connecting the listener with an actual artist, Pandora has connected the listener with a scam artist whose intent in the creation of music is not expressive but exploitative.
When I visited the artist page to report this content as deceptive, I found no simple mechanism to flag it, so I decided to post here to request that you take down the content.
Also, given the increasing prevalence of AI slop content, I think it would benefit the service greatly to provide users with an easier mechanism for reporting the presence of deceptive content like this, as posting to a community forum is an inefficient use of time both for Pandora users and staff.
Thanks!
I've just had a similar experience with a track from this "artist" https://www.pandora.com/artist/ara-piano/ARqgZf9n6hmP2hk appearing on one of my channels. I found the artist's name "ara_piano" interesting so went to ready more and found the artist's profile description had a number of things that caught my eye. Firstly, it was very generic and lacked any specific details. It had at least one punctuation error (a sentence without a period at the end). And interestingly the description's first few sentence referred to ara_piano as "her / she" and the end of the description uses the terms "he / his". Recognizing that they have a right to their own gender identity, it was unusual to me to see the inconsistency in the use of pronouns over a course of a few sentences. So I went to the internet to see if I could find any sign of an artist identifying at ara_piano, and I could not.
In any case, I find it concerning to see music being presented as by an "artist" when all of the circumstantial evidence points to it being AI generated. As with the original poster, I wasn't sure what action to take so I ultimately just gave the music the "thumbs down" however as a user, I would prefer not to have to do the work to research whether I'm listening to something created by a human or by AI and if this becomes a regular concern, it may be what drives me to another platform or method for my music listening.
I've been duped by our robot overlords!
I listened to over an hour of this https://pandora.app.link/UvagS3cMrTb before i learned that i have been made a fool.
I feel very betrayed and violated. These new times are scary. I wish pandora wouldn't allow AI. Or at the very least, make it well known to be AI.
Why haven't we seen a reply to this topic from a Pandora representative?
We as listeners are seeing a huge increase in the amount of cheap, exploitative AI generated trash being pushed out to streaming services in a manner that hides the fact they're generated, not human created. They're doing this specifically to steal revenue from real artists and real creators, and Pandora should be explicitly stating they do not support or condone this behavior.
Why is Pandora silent on this issue? Is Pandora allowing generated AI slop slingers to steal revenue from actual artists? And if not, what are they doing to prevent this from happening?
Hi there. 👋
We appreciate your feedback and have shared it with the team that manages our collection for review.
While we don’t have an update on your request right now, your input helps us better understand what matters to listeners like you. Thank you for helping us improve the experience.
Indeed, placing the onus on each user to "thumb down" AI slop is not a solution to the problem at all, because the "thumb down" action means something very specific, which is, "I do not like this track." Further, one cannot "thumb down" an "artist's" entire body of work and a "thumb down" does not apply across the entire corpus of a user's stations.
I think this response is the best response because it demonstrates Pandora is not taking this seriously, doesn't see it as an issue, and isn't planning on doing anything about it unless it affects them monetarily in some way.
This is a very similar non-response to what Spotify has given, and it was the reason I dropped Spotify after 10 years of being a subscriber.
Given Pandora is apparently and effectively no better than Spotify, I'm dropping my Pandora subscription after only, I don't know, six? Maybe eight months? I was hoping Pandora would have a bigger moral spine, but that's really a stretch to get in today's climate of shameless corporate greed, grift, gaslighting and working class exploitation.
Good luck to the rest of you enjoying the service. I hope Pandora is forced by either finances or public sway to address the ai-slop issue at some point moving forward. Unless you're into ai-slop, in which case... enjoy, I guess. 🤢