đ Share this article Advocacy Collective Claims to Have Scraped Millions of Music Files from Spotify A digital rights organization has claimed to have harvested a vast number of songs from Spotify and is preparing to release them publicly. Possible Boost for Artificial Intelligence Training Industry experts said the apparent leak could boost artificial intelligence firms searching for material to train their models. A group known as Annaâs Archive reported it had scraped 86 million audio tracks from Spotify and 256 million entries of metadata such as artist and album names. The company, which carries more than 100 million songs, confirmed that the breach did not represent its entire catalog. âWe have located and deactivated the malicious user accounts that were involved in illegal scraping,â said a company representative. The Stockholm-based service, which has more than 700 million subscribers worldwide, added that an inquiry into unauthorized access found a external actor collected public metadata and employed questionable tactics to circumvent DRM [digital rights management]. Archive's Stated Mission and Concerns Spotify does not believe the music acquired by Annaâs Archive has been made public yet. Annaâs Archive, which is recognized for providing links to pirated books, said in a blog it wanted to create a âhistorical repositoryâ for music. The group asserted the music files accounted for 99.6% of all music listened to by its listeners and would be shared via âpeer-to-peer networksâ, a method of sharing large digital files online. âOf course the service doesnât have all the music in the world, but itâs a great start,â said Annaâs Archive, which frames its mission as âpreserving humanityâs information and heritageâ. AI Training and Copyright Debate Ed Newton-Rex for protecting artistsâ copyright, said the breached music would likely be used for developing artificial intelligence systems. âTraining on illegally sourced data is unfortunately widespread in the tech sector, so this accessed music is highly likely to end up instructing AI models,â he stated. The group's website makes references to a large online archive, a huge online archive of copyrighted books that has allegedly been leveraged by Meta to develop its systems. The co-founder of an AI startup posted on the professional network that members of the public could in theory âbuild their own private free version of Spotifyâ. He added it could also enable tech companies to âeducate models on modern music at scaleâ. Copyright has emerged as a key issue between artists, authors and creatives on one side and AI companies on the other. Government Proposals and Reactions Across Britain, creative professionals have protested against a ministerial suggestion to allow AI companies use protected work without consent unless the owner signals. Almost every participant to a government consultation on the idea has supported artistsâ apprehensions. A government minister for technology, innovation and development told parliament this month there was âlittle consensusâ on the issue, noting that ministers would âuse the time to get this correctâ. The administration has committed to make policy proposals on AI and copyright by next year.