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Quest
Trust Not The System.

Also known as "Questtrek".

I make art and occasionally games.

🩷💜💙

I always try to give the best feedback possible, and am open to playtesting if you want another opinion.

Death to AI.

Feel free to PM me about anyting.

California

Joined on 4/8/21

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Help Newgrounds Fight AI on the Audio Portal

Posted by Quest - 3 weeks ago


Help Newgrounds Fight AI on the Audio Portal


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In light of me becoming User of the Day, I would like to direct everyone’s attention to an issue that is plaguing the Audio Portal: Tracks made entirely by artificial intelligence.


There is so, so much of it, and plenty more gets posted each day. In 2024 alone, I flagged 1500 AI-generated tracks (I refuse to call them “songs” or “music”). In 2025, I have flagged at least that so far, despite some inactivity the past couple months. These AI-generated tracks are usually made by Suno AI and are usually just thrown onto the portal with no cherry picking or editing. Manufactured noise. Most of the time it’s from unscouted users who think they found a “get scouted quick” scheme, but sometimes it’s from established, scouted users. Occasionally, these AI-generated tracks get frontpaged, to the horror of Tom and everyone on the Audio Portal Cleanup Thread. 


You might be wondering, how can I help? 


Well, the first thing is simply being aware of the issue, and by reading this post, you already have done that. Next I would recommend reading this guide that I co-authored with @ADR3-N. It has all you need to know about recognizing AI-generated tracks, whether you are a casual listener or are a dedicated AI hunter such as myself and @G2961. To summarize a main point of the guide, knowing whether a track is AI generated or not is done through both context clues and listening to the track itself. Starting out, my best advice is to pay attention to the vocals of a track, as that is the most accessible component for people inexperienced with AI. Take a listen to this example Suno AI track to see what I mean. Can you pick out a single voice in it? Does it sound scratchy? And would any vocalist in their right mind sing that way? 


Now that you know what AI sounds like, you can flag it when you come across it in the Audio Portal. If you are unsure, post it in the Audio Portal Cleanup Thread, or feel free to post your findings there regardless. It’s a good opportunity to check if others concur with you, report suspicious tracks, and to share with others what AI tracks sound like. 


One of the best ways you can help is by spreading the word about AI-generated tracks. Most people do not realize how advanced AI models have become and are unaware that services like Suno AI and Udio AI can regurgitate full tracks that are convincing enough to the general ear. 


What is at stake?


A lot, it turns out. Generative artificial intelligence is an amalgamation of stolen art blended and then hallucinated into slop, expending ludicrous amounts of power and fresh water all the while. In its own twisted way, generative artificial intelligence is Everything, by Everyone, yet the very antithesis of what this site stands for. The Audio Portal (and Newgrounds as a whole) is one of the last places on the internet that puts the priority of the artist over corporate greed. Please do what you can to treasure it and protect it. 


Thank you,

Quest


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Links:


Guide for Detecting AI-Generated Audio (co-authored by me and ADR3-N)


Infographic I made detailing AI tracks I encountered in 2024


Audio Portal Cleanup Thread


Tags:

13

Comments

thank you so much. 💜💜💜💜

I’m curious, what’s the probability of a AI music getting to the frontpage? Is it like 1 in 100?

Rarer than that. There's been about a dozen that I know of through 2024 into 2025. I don't know the exact count, and there might have been more that were not caught.

Thank you so much for contributing to the future of the audio portal too! I'm still waiting for you to get back online and help find AI shit on this audio portal too!

Thanks for sharing this, Quest! I had no clue AI is getting this convincing. If you're just casually listening to it, you may not even realize an audio track is AI-generated. We definitely need to keep an eye on this.

@Platzsoldier In 2024, almost 100 AI audio received Frontpaged, some of them probably even remained, but the audio that was Frontpaged is very much and it's not so easy to search.

Excellent use of opportunity, and yet another well written guide for the public. Awesome!

@destinyart Sometimes, AI music is downright scary for me -- especially with the grainier genres like lo-fi hip-hop, or chillhop as it's commonly referred to. There seems to be a subset of instruments it adheres to for everything else. I recommend listening to a bit of it yourself on purpose, i.e. via prompt, and getting used to how it sounds. You'll spot it immediately thereafter, with almost 100% accuracy.

Also, somehow I was not already following you. Well, fixed that!

@ADR3-N Thanks for the advice! I think that's a good idea - if I listen to the AI music carefully, I'll start to spot how it sounds when I hear it. I think it's tougher when it's ambient kind of music like the genres you mentioned. Lo-fi and stuff like that can be easy for AI to imitate, because there's not many dynamics and the song stays pretty much the same. But I think it's harder for AI to sound genuine and spontaneous in the way the human voice and human-written songs sound.

Congratulations on User of the Day!

@destinyart Oh absolutely. And not only is it hard for AI to accurately emulate the musicality of a human voice -- it's also hard for it to emulate quality, conscious mixing decisions made by a real human, since the input audio is compressed mp3s -- a lot lower quality than artists typically release.

@ADR3-N Absolutely! I like working with WAV files more myself, but if I have to, I can work with mp3s as well. There's definitely a sound quality difference, though. AI definitely can't properly mix a song in the way a human could, because that takes nuance and an ability to actually analyze what you hear. AI just knows how to imitate from all the inputs it gets from the internet, but I don't think it can truly make its own decisions in mixing a song, which is why it probably doesn't sound that good. So I agree, AI can't really compare to the human voice and human creativity.

Congratz to becoming User of the Day, Quest!

You know, when I see "I am User of the Day!"-posts I usually cheekily point out that this is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for them to capitalize in the extra attention they are getting and that they could do something more meaningful that just step up to the microphone and announce "I am User of the Day! That is all."

But you are _actually_ doing exactly that: Doing your part in saving the world!
And I am very proud to share a community with you! :)

Very glad to share a community with you as well (:

@destinyart You are once again 100% correct. AI does not mix well at all. It works based on isolated stems fed into it of different tracks, which as you know sound like ass to begin with. There are artefacts everywhere. A lot of times, this is what we hear.

Then too, you know from crushing mp3s from 320kbps to 190kbps or whatever, it blows and compresses the mix to absolute ass. AI music is never going to sound good with that kind of quality discrepancy, no matter what it exports at.

@ADR3-N Yes, exactly, when you look at it from that view, you see why AI music is not going to sound that good. You lose quality when you compress a mix that much, so you're not going to hear something that sounds pleasant to the ear. That's probably another sign for spotting AI - if it's working on isolated stems that already sound pretty awful, its "song" is not going to have a great sound!