Not long after they released their latest album Phantom Island back in June, King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard announced they were taking their massive catalog off of Spotify — one of many such cases this year. Now, the unfortunately inevitable has happened: Somebody impersonated King Gizz on Spotify, allegedly using generative AI to do so.
Yesterday a Reddit user pointed out that their latest Spotify Release Radar roundup included a song by an artist using the rather conspicuous name “King Lizard Wizard.” What’s more, the song was called “Rattlesnake” and bore a lot of glaring similarities to the real King Gizz’s 2016 track of the same name, right down to the lyrics. It was reportedly one of a handful of King Gizz rip-offs shared by “King Lizard Wizard” — all of which have since been removed from Spotify — so it’s safe to assume whoever was behind the facade used an AI model to make “slop covers” of King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard songs.
“[I’m] trying to see the irony in this situation,” King Gizz frontman Stu Mackenzie wrote in a statement. “But seriously wtf we are truly doomed.” In a statement to the Aussie-based blog The Music, a rep for Spotify said: “Spotify strictly prohibits any form of artist impersonation. The content in question was removed for violating our policies, and no royalties were paid out for any streams generated.”
In September, Spotify announced plans to clean up AI slop on their platform, including a purportedly stricter impersonation policy. But that didn’t stop “King Lizard Wizard” from inclusion on users’ Release Radars, and it certainly hasn’t weeded out all the AI voices that sound strikingly similar to real artists. Especially now that Universal Music Group, Sony Music, and Warner Music Group have all signed a licensing deal allowing their recordings to be used to train AI, that uncanny valley will likely soon become even more sprawling.
