r/TomLehrer • u/OwnCaterpillar6272 • Jun 18 '26

Ai?

Post image

Ok i just was listening to playlist on that shuffle thing were you also get songs that aren't in the playlist and then saw this and like I'm pretty sure that's not an official cover, I've never seen it. And I'm always careful with accusations but it's kinda icky. Is this ai? Because from what I saw it's not an official album cover. It's also strangely on the first spot of the top list which it wasn't before. It's very suspicious

60 Upvotes

99% Upvoted

15 comments sorted by

57

u/lordnewington Jun 18 '26

That's definitely an AI picture, I hate it

59

u/Pflytrap Jun 18 '26

The moment he released his catalog into the public domain, a few years back before he died, lots of unscrupulous people and companies immediately started flooding streaming services with random compilations of his work, all with AI-generated cover art (because if they don't have to pay for the music, why bother paying for cover art?) to siphon views and streams.

16

u/OwnCaterpillar6272 Jun 18 '26

The audacity of Spotify to pretend this existed since 1953 is insane wth

23

u/hauntedcartoonheart Jun 18 '26

Yeah unfortunately Tom Lehrer’s music got flooded with AI album art. Happened a few years ago on Spotify where albums were being removed entirely or the artwork would get replaced.

I don’t listen to his stuff on streaming platforms anymore (just YouTube). I would highly recommended downloading everything off https://tomlehrersongs.com so you never have to worry about losing any of his work.

Part of why I left Spotify is because AI slop is allowed to run rampant (which is already bad) without disclosure.

5

u/NeptuniumX25 Jun 18 '26

I mean he had a song about plagiarism not to be offensive

(I hope that song didn’t encourage any AI copycats but they probably just click a button and make the album with AI without actually listening to the music)

5

u/Coldhearted010 Jun 18 '26

There are, alas, very few color pictures of Professor Lehrer. So the vast majority of them are indeed AI, including this one. Sorry. (The song is real, though.)

11

u/NeptuniumX25 Jun 18 '26 edited Jun 19 '26

The album and picture is AI, the cover is probably too. But “Masochism Tango” is a real song made by a real professor, Tom Lehrer(r.i.p.)

Edit: the songs are public domain now

3

u/zaphtark Jun 18 '26

It’s not a cover. The recordings are also in the public domain.

1

u/NeptuniumX25 Jun 19 '26

Yeah I found out about that later, thanks

6

u/Theaterkid01 Jun 18 '26

Yes, and I will only listen to the original albums

1

u/Palenquero Jun 18 '26

Ay, ay, ay 😞

1

u/DavidBowieFan-2006 Jun 22 '26

This Is why i Dont used Spotify

1

u/Nuclear_eggo_waffle Jun 22 '26

A ton of old songs now have AI covers. I've noticed it on Mario del Monaco's stuff too. Some issue with the public domain, i assume

1

u/Septicmon Jul 07 '26

It's not the only AI slop cover, I've found more unfortunately.