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Apple Music shares what it is doing to ‘keep music fair’ in an AI world

Benjamin Mayo | May 20 2026 - 11:54 am PT

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The streaming service Apple Music today shared an open letter with music labels and industry partners entitled ‘What We’re Doing to Keep Music Fair’, reaffirming its commitment to help the music business navigate the use of AI responsibly.

The company said it believes technology should amplify artists, not replace them. Apple says AI music represents significantly less than 1% of all plays on the service, but it is being proactive to keep a fair, level playing field for all creators.

Nevertheless, Apple Music says AI is an exciting opportunity to help artists find new and innovative way to tell stories. But it is putting in guardrails for transparency and to prevent abuse. Apple is not banning AI-generated music, but it must be clearly labelled and not misleading.

In March, Apple Music became the first global service to add tagging support for AI content. It says top distributors have begun supplying this information, and it will be a requirement for all providers to do so in the future. Right now, this AI metadata is not shown to end users in the Music app interface, but it lets Apple keep tabs on how things are going.

Additionally, Apple has developed internal tools that help identify AI-generated content in its ongoing fight against fraud, spam and impersonation. When a majority of plays for an AI song are coming from stream manipulation, Apple Music automatically removes that song from the service.

In February, Apple Music also doubled the penalty for extreme cases of stream manipulation, and the company’s Music Style Guide forbids the use of AI in a misleading manner.

Apple says it is leading the industry when it comes to preventing stream manipulation. In 2025, it excluded about 2 billion manipulated streams, redistributing those royalties to its payout pool. The company says stream manipulation on Apple Music is below 0.5%, one of the lowest rates in the industry.

It also reiterates that human curation remains at the center of what Apple Music is. The company’s editorial team remains focused on featuring the best music, enhancing recommendations and discovery across the platform.

We’ve also seen Apple use artificial intelligence tools to enhance the Apple Music product experience in several ways already. That includes features like AutoMix and the recent debut of Playlist Playground which helps users quickly create personalized playlists using a natural language prompt.

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Benjamin Mayo

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Benjamin develops iOS apps professionally and covers Apple news and rumors for 9to5Mac. Listen to Benjamin, every week, on the Happy Hour podcast. Check out his personal blog. Message Benjamin over email or Twitter.

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