Photo Credit: Spotify
Aussie prog rockers King Gizzard & the Lizard Wizard pulled their music from Spotify in July. Now, copycats are using genAI to clone the band’s sound.
Australian prog rock band King Gizzard & the Lizard Wizard joined an ever-growing list of artists when it pulled its music from Spotify in July. But now, impersonators are using generative AI (genAI) to copy the band’s iconic sound.
A track called “Rattlesnake,” listed on Spotify under an artist with the name “King Lizard Wizard,” was recommended to users on Reddit on their Release Radar. The real King Gizzard does, in fact, have a song called “Rattlesnake,” and the clearly AI-generated version has identical lyrics to the band’s original version.
“A bad AI ripoff, from aesthetics to band name, copying their songs,” wrote the Reddit user who first discovered the track on their Spotify recommendations. “I find this absolutely deplorable and am now quitting my [Spotify] account.”
Redditors noticed that every song uploaded by the knockoff “King Lizard Wizard” on Spotify has the same title as an actual King Gizzard song, with corresponding lyrics taken directly from the source. That implies the perpetrator fed the band’s lyrics into an AI music generator when instructing it to copy their sound.
A search on Spotify for “King Gizzard” will bring up the band’s now-abandoned official profile. “King Lizard Wizard” is recommended directly below it.
This isn’t the first King Gizzard impersonator on the service, either. Last month, Platformer reported that Spotify had been overrun with a King Gizzard impersonator that was uploading “muzak” versions of the band’s songs.
It’s part of an overarching problem for Spotify, which is obviously struggling with content moderation in the face of an increasing barrage of AI “slop.”
While the company recently announced new policies to protect artists against “spam, impersonation, and deception” in September, it clearly hasn’t made a significant impact yet. Moreover, many critics have pointed to the indisputable fact that Spotify stands to gain from the streams of AI content on its service—as long as that content can slide under the radar.
