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A digital rights group has claimed to have harvested millions of tracks from Spotify and is preparing to publish them publicly.

Potential Boost for Artificial Intelligence Development

Industry experts said the seeming leak could boost artificial intelligence firms looking for material to train their models.

An entity called Anna’s Archive said it had obtained 86 million audio tracks from Spotify and 256 million entries of associated data such as artist and album names. Spotify, which carries more than 100 million songs, stated that the breach did not constitute its full inventory.

“We have located and disabled the nefarious user accounts that engaged in unlawful scraping,” stated a company spokesperson.

The Swedish service, which has more than 700 million users worldwide, added that an inquiry into unauthorized access identified a external actor collected public metadata and employed illicit methods to bypass DRM protections.

Archive's Declared Goal and Worries

Spotify does not believe the audio acquired by Anna’s Archive has been released yet. Anna’s Archive, which is recognized for offering links to copyright-infringing books, said in a blog it wanted to create a ‘preservation archive’ for music.

They asserted the audio files accounted for 99.6% of all music listened to by Spotify users and would be shared via ‘torrents’, a means of sharing large digital files online.

“Of course the service doesn’t have all the music in the world, but it’s a fantastic start,” said Anna’s Archive, which describes its purpose as “safeguarding humanity’s knowledge and culture”.

Model Development and Intellectual Property Battleground

Ed Newton-Rex for defending artists’ rights, remarked the breached music would likely be utilized for training AI models.

“Training on illegally sourced data is sadly common in the tech sector, so this stolen music is highly likely to be used training AI models,” he stated.

The Anna’s Archive site alludes to LibGen, a vast online repository of pirated books that has reportedly been used by the parent company of Facebook to train its systems.

The co-founder of an AI startup posted on LinkedIn that individuals of the public could in principle “create their own personal free version of Spotify”. The executive said it could also allow tech companies to “educate models on contemporary music at scale”.

Intellectual property law has become a key issue between creatives, writers and content creators on one side and AI companies on the other.

Government Considerations and Responses

Across Britain, artists and writers have raised concerns against a ministerial proposal to allow AI companies utilize copyright-protected work without consent unless the owner opts out. Almost every respondent to a government consultation on the idea has supported artists’ concerns.

A government minister for technology, innovation and development told parliament this month there was “little consensus” on the matter, adding that ministers would “take the time to get this right”. The administration has pledged to make policy proposals on AI and copyright by next year.