🔗 Share this article Activist Collective Claims to Have Extracted Countless of Audio Files from Spotify An activist organization has stated to have harvested millions of tracks from Spotify and is getting ready to release them online. Potential Boost for AI Development Industry experts said the seeming leak could boost AI companies looking for material to develop their technology. A group called Anna’s Archive reported it had obtained 86 million audio tracks from Spotify and 256 million rows of associated data such as artist and album names. The company, which hosts more than 100 million songs, stated that the breach did not represent its entire inventory. “We have located and deactivated the malicious user accounts that engaged in unlawful scraping,” said a company representative. The Stockholm-based service, which has more than 700 million users worldwide, added that an inquiry into unauthorized access identified a external actor collected public metadata and used questionable methods to circumvent DRM protections. Group's Stated Mission and Worries The streaming service does not think the audio acquired by Anna’s Archive has been made public yet. Anna’s Archive, which is recognized for providing links to pirated books, wrote in a blog it wanted to create a ‘preservation archive’ for music. The group asserted the music files represented 99.6% of all music listened to by its listeners and would be distributed via ‘peer-to-peer networks’, a means of exchanging large digital files online. “Naturally Spotify doesn’t have all the music in the world, but it’s a great beginning,” commented Anna’s Archive, which frames its purpose as “safeguarding humanity’s information and culture”. Model Development and Intellectual Property Debate A composer and campaigner for protecting artists’ copyright, said the breached music would likely be utilized for training artificial intelligence systems. “Training on illegally sourced data is sadly widespread in the tech sector, so this accessed music is highly likely to be used training AI models,” he said. The group's website alludes to LibGen, a vast online archive of pirated books that has reportedly been leveraged by the parent company of Facebook to train its AI models. The co-founder of an artificial intelligence company wrote on LinkedIn that individuals of the public could in theory “create their own private free equivalent of the service”. The executive said it could also enable technology firms to “educate models on contemporary music at scale”. Intellectual property law has emerged as a key issue between creatives, authors and content creators on one side and tech giants on the other. Government Considerations and Responses In the UK, creative professionals have raised concerns against a ministerial proposal to allow AI companies utilize copyright-protected work without permission unless the owner opts out. Virtually every respondent to a government consultation on the proposal has supported artists’ concerns. The secretary of state for science, research and technology told parliament this month there was “no clear consensus” on the matter, adding that ministers would “use the time to get this right”. The administration has pledged to make regulatory plans on AI and copyright by March 2025.