Apple Music is adding tags to show which songs are made by AI

It’s hard trusting reality these days, and I’m not channeling my inner Timothy Leary here – there’s so much AI these days that one can’t be 100% sure of anything no more. The situation is especially irritating when it comes to music.Deezer’s AI-detection system catches synthetic tracks automatically. That system flagged over 60,000 fully AI-generated songs per day in January 2026 (up from 10,000 in early 2025). That’s crazy. Deezer reports that synthetic content now makes up roughly 39% of its daily uploads and that the majority of AI-music streams are linked to fraud rather than creative work.That’s why Apple Music is rolling out a new system to make AI-generated music more visible to the industry. The platform is introducing Transparency Tags, a set of metadata labels that record labels and distributors can start applying immediately and will eventually be required to use for all new content.

The four tags

The Transparency Tags cover four areas:

• Artwork
• Track
• Composition
• Music Video

The Artwork tag flags albums where AI created a material part of the visual content, including static or motion graphics. Track tags identify songs where AI contributed significantly to the sound recording itself. The Composition tag highlights AI-written lyrics or musical elements, while the Music Video tag flags any visual content created with AI, whether part of an album or standalone. Labels can apply multiple tags at once depending on the content.Apple frames the system as a responsibility for the supply chain rather than the platform. Labels and distributors are asked to decide what counts as AI-generated, much like how they handle genres or credits.