Spotify Cut 50 Million AI Tracks From Recommendations, but Its AI Record Stays Uneven

Spotify has removed more than 50 million tracks it classified as AI-generated slop and spam from its recommendations over the past year, according to disclosures reported by Music Business Worldwide. The figure sits on top of roughly 75 million spammy tracks the platform says it had already removed in recent years.

The company frames the purge as a response to listening behavior. In a post on its site, Spotify said it examined tracks users were skipping, ignoring, or flagging, then spent six months adjusting its recommendation system to reduce that material and surface more music made by human artists. It reports a marked decrease in listener complaints since the changes.

Detection, per Spotify, is cumulative rather than singular: engagement signals and listener feedback, upload patterns, metadata, and third-party AI detection tools are weighed together. The platform also says it monitors mass uploads, duplicates, SEO manipulation, spammy playlist networks, and artificially short tracks.

The cleanup is narrower than a moral position on AI. Spotify has continued to build with the technology, including a 2025 partnership with ElevenLabs for AI-narrated audiobooks, and it has faced criticism for moving too slowly against AI fakes of deceased artists and impersonators. King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard left the platform in 2025 in protest of CEO Daniel Ek’s investment in AI drone technology. Removing junk from recommendations is a product decision. What the platform does with the technology around it remains the open question.