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An activist group has claimed to have scraped millions of songs from Spotify and is getting ready to release them online.

Possible Boost for Artificial Intelligence Development

Industry experts said the apparent data breach could aid artificial intelligence firms searching for data to develop their models.

A group called Anna’s Archive reported it had scraped 86 million audio tracks from Spotify and 256 million entries of associated data such as artist and record names. Spotify, which hosts more than 100 million songs, confirmed that the leak did not constitute its entire inventory.

“We have identified and disabled the nefarious user accounts that were involved in unlawful scraping,” said a Spotify representative.

The Swedish company, which has more than 700 million users worldwide, further explained that an investigation into unauthorized access found a external actor collected public metadata and used illicit methods to bypass DRM protections.

Archive's Stated Goal and Worries

Spotify does not believe the music taken by Anna’s Archive has been made public yet. Anna’s Archive, which is known for providing links to copyright-infringing books, said in a blog it wanted to create a ‘preservation archive’ for music.

The group claimed the music files represented 99.6% of all music listened to by Spotify users and would be distributed via ‘torrents’, a method of exchanging large digital files online.

“Of course the service doesn’t have all the music in the world, but it’s a great beginning,” said Anna’s Archive, which frames its mission as “preserving humanity’s knowledge and culture”.

AI Training and Intellectual Property Debate

A composer and campaigner for protecting artists’ copyright, said the leaked music would probably be utilized for training artificial intelligence systems.

“Educating models on illegally sourced data is unfortunately widespread in the AI industry, so this stolen music is highly likely to end up instructing AI models,” he said.

The Anna’s Archive site makes references to a large online archive, a vast online repository of pirated books that has reportedly been used by the parent company of Facebook to develop its AI models.

The co-founder of an AI startup posted on the professional network that members of the public could in theory “build their own personal free equivalent of Spotify”. He said it could also allow tech companies to “train on contemporary music at a large volume”.

Copyright has become a key issue between creatives, writers and content creators on one side and tech giants on the other.

Policy Proposals and Reactions

In the UK, creative professionals have protested against a government suggestion to let AI companies utilize copyright-protected work without consent unless the owner signals. Virtually every participant to a government consultation on the idea has backed artists’ apprehensions.

A government minister for technology, innovation and development informed parliament this month there was “no clear consensus” on the issue, noting that ministers would “take the time to get this correct”. The government has committed to make regulatory plans on AI and copyright by next year.