🔗 Share this article Advocacy Collective Claims to Have Scraped Millions of Audio Files from the Streaming Giant An activist group has claimed to have scraped a vast number of songs from the popular streaming service and is preparing to release them publicly. Potential Boost for Artificial Intelligence Development Observers noted the seeming data breach could boost artificial intelligence firms looking for material to develop their models. A group called Anna’s Archive reported it had scraped 86 million music files from Spotify and 256 million rows of metadata such as artist and album names. Spotify, which hosts more than 100 million songs, confirmed that the breach did not constitute its entire catalog. “We have identified and disabled the nefarious user accounts that were involved in illegal scraping,” stated a Spotify representative. The Swedish company, which has more than 700 million subscribers worldwide, added that an investigation into unauthorised access identified a third party collected public metadata and employed illicit tactics to bypass DRM protections. Group's Stated Goal and Worries The streaming service does not believe the music taken by Anna’s Archive has been released yet. Anna’s Archive, which is known for offering links to pirated books, said in a blog it wanted to create a ‘preservation archive’ for music. They claimed the audio files accounted for 99.6% of all music streamed to by Spotify users and would be distributed via ‘torrents’, a means of exchanging large data files online. “Naturally Spotify doesn’t have all the music in the world, but it’s a great beginning,” commented Anna’s Archive, which describes its purpose as “safeguarding humanity’s information and heritage”. Model Development and Intellectual Property Debate Ed Newton-Rex for defending artists’ rights, remarked the breached music would likely be utilized for training artificial intelligence systems. “Educating models on pirated material is unfortunately common in the AI industry, so this accessed music is highly likely to end up instructing AI models,” he said. The Anna’s Archive site makes references to LibGen, a vast online repository of pirated books that has allegedly been leveraged by Meta to develop its systems. The co-founder of an artificial intelligence company posted on the professional network that individuals of the public could in principle “create their own personal free version of the service”. The executive added it could also enable technology firms to “train on modern music at scale”. Copyright has emerged as a key issue between creatives, writers and content creators on one side and tech giants on the other. Policy Proposals and Responses In the UK, creative professionals have raised concerns against a ministerial proposal to let AI companies use protected work without consent unless the owner opts out. Virtually every participant to a government call for evidence on the proposal has supported artists’ apprehensions. A government minister for technology, innovation and development told parliament this month there was “little consensus” on the matter, noting that ministers would “use the time to get this correct”. The government has pledged to make regulatory plans on AI and copyright by next year.