How Your Body Responds Differently to AI-Generated Music

Published: October 28, 2025

By Gavin Boyle

A new study into the effects of AI music on listeners found multiple biometric responses to AI-generated music were significantly different than in response to human created songs.

“The results show that both AI soundtracks led to wider pupil dilation compared with human-created music but did not differ significantly from each other. AI-generated music with sophisticated prompts resulted in a higher blink rate and skin impedance levels as markers of attention and cognitive load, while emotional valence remained consistent across conditions,” the study explains. “Participatns found AI-generated music more arousing than human-created music (HMC), while HMC was perceived as more familiar than both AI conditions.”

These results suggest that AI-generated music places a larger cognitive load on listeners, perhaps because it feels less familiar to listeners. Human-generated music follows certain conventions that listeners implicitly expect, while AI-generated music is more likely to break these conventions.

This study comes at a turning point in the music industry as more and more people involved in the field are interested in employing AI in their creation process.

In September, Spotify updated its policies to address AI-generated content, much of which was being uploaded to the platform by bad actors looking to cash in through recreations of popular artists. The company said that 75 million of these tracks were removed from the platform in the past 12 months alone.

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Less than a month after releasing these new guidelines for AI-generated content, Spotify announced plans to incorporate AI onto the platform to enable its musicians while improving users’ experience.

“AI is the most consequential technology shift since the smartphone, and it’s already reshaping how music is created and experienced,” said Gustav Söderström, co-president and chief product and technology officer at Spotify. “At Spotify, we want to build this future hand in hand with the music industry, guided by our clear principles and deep respect for creators, just as we did in the days of piracy. Our company brings deep research expertise to this opportunity and we’re actively growing our AI team and capabilities to drive the continued growth of the entire music ecosystem.”

While introducing AI to the music industry’s creation pipeline may speed up production, artists thinking about doing so may take pause after learning about this new study. Perhaps the cognitive load on listeners will come closer to human-generated music sometime in the future but until then, hopefully artists will choose to keep AI out of their production process to help listeners continue to enjoy music without stressing out their brains.

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