Sony Music Has Filed 260,000 AI Deepfake Takedowns — Nearly Double Six Months Ago
Published · curated by AI Is Going Just Great
Source: musically.com ↗
"We will keep enforcing our artists' rights and expect platforms to act quickly and to prevent the same content from reappearing, but it's becoming an uphill struggle."
Sony Music told the Financial Times that it has now filed more than 260,000 takedown notices for AI-generated deepfakes of its artists, up from 135,000 in March 2026 and 75,000 in March 2025. The acceleration is striking: it took a year to go from 75k to 135k, and only six months to nearly double again.
The problem extends well beyond fake songs. A fan of country artist Martina McBride nearly lost his home to a scammer using AI to impersonate her. Taylor Swift has faced deepfaked ads used as phishing bait on TikTok, a fake "new music video" published to YouTube, and enough voice-cloning pressure that she filed a trademark on her own voice in April. The US No Fakes Act has been reintroduced twice without passing. Sony's framing of the situation as "an uphill struggle" is doing a lot of diplomatic work.