In the first month of the year, folk musician Murphy Campbell stumbled upon several unexpected tracks linked to her Spotify profile. These songs, which she had indeed recorded, had never been officially uploaded by her to Spotify. Something about the vocals seemed amiss.

Campbell soon concluded that someone had taken her YouTube performances, crafted AI covers, and distributed them across streaming platforms under her name. When I analyzed one of the songs, “Four Marys,” using two distinct AI detection tools, both suggested the track was likely AI-generated, confirming her suspicions.

Campbell expressed her disbelief at the situation, saying to The Verge, “I assumed there were more safeguards in place to prevent this. Apparently, I was mistaken.” She eventually managed to have the fake tracks removed after persistent efforts. However, the victory was incomplete. Although the tracks seemed to have vanished from YouTube Music and Apple Music, one remained on Spotify, albeit under a different artist profile but with her name. Now, there are multiple profiles under the name Murphy Campbell. “Obviously, I was thrilled by that,” the genuine Murphy Campbell remarked with irony.

Spotify is currently experimenting with a system enabling artists to approve songs manually before they appear on their profiles. Yet, Campbell remains doubtful. “Whenever large entities make such promises to musicians, they often fall short. I’m intrigued to see how it unfolds, though,” she commented.

Unfortunately, this was only the start of Campbell’s ordeal.

The day a Rolling Stone article highlighted Campbell’s encounter with AI impersonators, a set of videos surfaced on YouTube via distributor Vydia. These videos haven’t been made public, and it’s uncertain if anyone besides the uploader, known as Murphy Rider, has viewed them. YouTube chose not to provide a comment regarding this matter.

Those were used to claim ownership of the material in several of Murphy Campbell’s videos. Campbell received a notice from YouTube reading: “You are now sharing revenues with the copyright owners of the music detected in your video, Darling Corey.” The most confusing part, the songs at the center of these claims are all in the public domain, including the classic “In the Pines,” which dates back to at least the 1870s and has been covered by everyone from Lead Belly to Nirvana (as “Where Did You Sleep Last Night”).

Vydia has since released those claims, and spokesperson Roy LaManna says the person who uploaded the videos has been banned from their platform. Of the over 6,000,000 claims filed by Vydia through YouTube’s Content ID system, 0.02 percent were found to be invalid, which LaManna says is, “by industry standards is like amazing.” Continuing, “we pride ourselves on doing this the right way.”

LaManna also says that Vydia has no connection to Timeless IR or the AI covers that were uploaded to streaming platforms under Campbell’s name. While the timing is certainly suspicious, LaManna says the two incidents are separate.

Vydia has received a lot of blowback including, LaManna says, “literal death threats” which have led to the offices being evacuated. Campbell isn’t about to let Vydia off the hook, but notes that it’s not solely to blame. The worlds of generative AI, music distribution, and copyright are complex with multiple points of failure and opportunities for abuse. “I think it goes way deeper than we think it does,” Campbell says.