YouTube adds ‘Made with AI’ label for AI-generated songs

YouTube wants you to know when the singer you’re hearing was never in a recording booth. The company has started labeling music on YouTube Music that was substantially created or altered with generative AI. The rollout began October 14, 2026, and the tags are also coming to the main YouTube app. The goal is listener transparency at a time when synthetic tracks are piling up faster than anyone can audit them. How the new music labels work It is not a blanket stamp for any song that touched an AI tool. A producer who used software to clean up a vocal take or tighten a drum loop should not trigger the label. Instead, YouTube is targeting tracks where generative AI did the heavy lifting. The company gave a specific example of what qualifies: “using a generative model to create the composition and vocals” The process starts with disclosure. Music partners flag AI involvement through standardized metadata, submitted via DDEX or CSV files when they upload tracks. Each song falls into one of three buckets: Fully Gen AI, Partly Gen AI, or No Gen AI. YouTube has also published guidance for its music partners explaining how to make these disclosures. The rules are meant to keep the categories...