According to Music Business Worldwide, which retells The Verge, folk singer Murphy Campbell finds AI 'covers' of her songs on her own Spotify profile, uploaded without her consent. She suspects her voice was cloned from her YouTube videos. Then, in a separate incident, copyright claims were filed against her real videos through the distributor Vydia. The flip side of voice technology.
- According to MBW (citing The Verge), AI 'covers' of folk singer Murphy Campbell show up on her Spotify profile without her consent; she suspects cloning from her videos.
- In a separate incident, Content ID claims were filed against her real YouTube videos through the distributor Vydia; Vydia released them and banned the user.
- Spotify is only now piloting a feature that lets artists approve releases before they appear on their profiles.
The text merged two separate incidents into one: the AI covers on the singer's Spotify profile (January 2026) and the Content ID claims against her YouTube videos (25 March, through the distributor Vydia). We also claimed the covers were uploaded through a distributor and that the claims took down the original recordings. According to Music Business Worldwide the incidents are separate, the claims redirect revenue and have since been released, and the cloning is the singer's own guess. The headline, dek and text were corrected. The conclusion about the weakness of the claims system doesn't change.
The folk singer finds generated 'covers' of her songs on her own Spotify profile, uploaded without her consent. She herself guesses that someone took her performances from YouTube and ran them through a voice-cloning tool. The absurd part comes next, in a separate incident - copyright claims hit her real YouTube videos, as if she were the infringer.
See how easily everything flips. You don't need a hacker. A public video and a tool everyone already has in their hand are enough. And proving that you're the real one falls on you - not on whoever copied you.
The real twist is in the legal machine. The copyright system was built to protect the author - here it works against her. Automated claims don't ask who sang it first. They redirect the original recording's revenue to whoever filed the claim first. According to Vydia itself, her recordings simply weren't in the audio recognition databases, and someone exploited that. A mechanism that punishes the original just because someone else's claim got filed faster - that's no longer a hole in one tool, it's a hole in the whole chain that's supposed to protect the creator.
The story comes from the musician's own account to The Verge, retold by Music Business Worldwide. Neither Spotify nor YouTube has made an official statement on the case. Vydia has commented publicly only on the claims and says they have no connection to the AI covers.