This post has been updated to include a statement from Spotify.
Lorde would prefer to let her music speak for itself, especially when it comes to misleading AI descriptions. In an Instagram story posted on July 16, the singer expressed frustration over Spotify’s new About the Song feature, which uses AI to generate a summary of whatever song the app is playing. Tagging the streaming platform, she wrote: “I’m gonna go out on a limb and say we don’t want this.”
The summary in question appeared alongside the Virgin track “Current Affairs,” and incorrectly cited it as the song Lorde performs during a moment from her 2025 Ultrasound World Tour when she removes her clothes and a dancer pours water on her. The choreographed sequence actually occurs during “GRWM.”
“Not only is this inaccurate (not the song I did that in) but reducing a song to an AI-generated meaning right at the source feels like it limits free interpretation IMO,” Lorde wrote of the description. “At least make it possible for artists to opt out please.”
Spotify launched the About the Song feature in February, announcing in a press release that it would “explore the meaning behind the music you’re hearing” using summaries from “third party sources.” The extension is still in beta. The launch arrives under a year after, in September 2025, the company claimed to be strengthening its policies around AI music specifically, asserting that the platform had removed over 75 million “spammy tracks” over a 12-month period.
In a statement shared with Pitchfork, a spokesperson for Spotify said: “We built ‘About the Song’ because fans want to dig into the stories behind the music. It’s still in beta. The info comes from articles across the internet, and when something’s off, we move fast to fix it, like we did here. Getting it right matters to us.”
Lorde has been consistent in her criticism of the encroachment of AI on every facet of society; this isn’t even the first time this month she’s vocalized this concern. During a set at Madrid’s Mad Cool Festival on July 9, she offered a straightforward piece of advice to her audience in regards to Meta’s new line of AI glasses, which include a built-in AI assistant and facial-recognition technology. “Increasingly, in our world, it gets harder and harder to know what is real,” she told the crowd. “Can I just say, for the record, fuck the glasses. Don’t get the glasses. Not sexy.”
