AI Transparency Tags
Apple Music's disclosure system, where whoever uploads a track declares whether AI was used for the recording, the artwork, the lyrics or the video.
Apple introduced Transparency Tags in March 2026 as a way for the music industry to declare AI involvement in four separate places: album artwork, the recording itself, the composition including lyrics, and the music video. They started out optional. From August 2026 they are required wherever AI produced a material portion of the work, and Apple began telling partners it would surface them to listeners as a visible “Made With AI” label.
The design puts the burden on distributors rather than on detection software, which is both its strength and its weakness. It scales to millions of uploads and it captures the many shades between “a human with a synthesiser” and “typed a prompt”, but it only works for people who fill it in honestly.