For some YouTube Music users, the dead internet theory is slowly starting to become reality. This is primarily because the AI rot is spreading, and it is now making its way to users’ music recommendations.
Spotify was already battling with AI slop making its way to recommendations, and it looks like YouTube Music is now in the same boat.
I’m not talking about AI-powered recommendations or features like AI DJ or AI Playlist. Those are arguably decent features. Instead, I’m talking about actual AI-generated music content making its way to the music streaming platforms’ recommendations.
The issue was first highlighted by user vlastawa on Reddit, and subsequently corroborated by several users that commented on the post (via PiunikaWeb).
Manually created playlists might be the only safe alternative for now
According to the user, out of ten recommendations on their YouTube Music New feed, six were identified as AI-generated tracks. “The other day every other song in my auto-generated playlist was AI slop. Clicking “I’m not interested” nor thumbing them down really makes no difference as it only applies to this one specific song, not the “artist” (who replace quality with quantity, which makes it pop up even more),” wrote the user.
Others added that “new releases is often 60-75% AI, a lot of the time with 5-12 new ‘songs’ from one creator on the list at once,” and that “the blues genre is littered with AI slop.”
Users also suggest that the action of ensuring that a track is AI-generated or not might be responsible for pushing more AI slop. For example, pulling up the user/artist you suspect might be uploading AI-generated music might just signal YouTube Music’s algorithm into thinking that you’re ‘engaging’ with the artist, which triggers even more AI-generated recommendations in your feed.
Not every YouTube Music user seems to be affected. However, this is clearly not an isolated incident either, as highlighted by numerous users.
For now, returning to local libraries and manually curated playlists seems to be the only reliable defense against AI slop invading your music feed. Are you encountering AI-generated tracks in your YouTube Music recommended feed? Let us know in the comments below.
