By KELVIN CHAN

LONDON (AP) — Music streaming service Deezer said Friday that it will start flagging albums with AI-generated songs, part of its fight against streaming fraudsters.

Deezer, based in Paris, is grappling with a surge in music on its platform created using artificial intelligence tools it says are being wielded to earn royalties fraudulently.

The app will display an on-screen label warning about “AI-generated content” and notify listeners that some tracks on an album were created with song generators.

Deezer is a small player in music streaming, which is dominated by Spotify, Amazon and Apple, but the company said AI-generated music is an “industry-wide issue.” It’s committed to “safeguarding the rights of artists and songwriters at a time where copyright law is being put into question in favor of training AI models,” CEO Alexis Lanternier said in a press release.

Deezer’s move underscores the disruption caused by generative AI systems, which are trained on the contents of the internet including text, images and audio available online. AI companies are facing a slew of lawsuits challenging their practice of scraping the web for such training data without paying for it.

According to an AI song detection tool that Deezer rolled out this year, 18% of songs uploaded to its platform each day, or about 20,000 tracks, are now completely AI generated. Just three months earlier, that number was 10%, Lanternier said in a recent interview.

AI has many benefits but it also “creates a lot of questions” for the music industry, Lanternier told The Associated Press. Using AI to make music is fine as long as there’s an artist behind it but the problem arises when anyone, or even a bot, can use it to make music, he said.

Music fraudsters “create tons of songs. They upload, they try to get on playlists or recommendations, and as a result they gather royalties,” he said.

Musicians can’t upload music directly to Deezer or rival platforms like Spotify or Apple Music. Music labels or digital distribution platforms can do it for artists they have contracts with, while anyone else can use a “self service” distribution company.

Fully AI-generated music still accounts for only about 0.5% of total streams on Deezer. But the company said it’s “evident” that fraud is “the primary purpose” for these songs because it suspects that as many as seven in 10 listens of an AI song are done by streaming “farms” or bots, instead of humans.

Any AI songs used for “stream manipulation” will be cut off from royalty payments, Deezer said.

AI has been a hot topic in the music industry, with debates swirling around its creative possibilities as well as concerns about its legality.

Two of the most popular AI song generators, Suno and Udio, are being sued by record companies for copyright infringement, and face allegations they exploited recorded works of artists from Chuck Berry to Mariah Carey.

Gema, a German royalty-collection group, is suing Suno in a similar case filed in Munich, accusing the service of generating songs that are “confusingly similar” to original versions by artists it represents, including “Forever Young” by Alphaville, “Daddy Cool” by Boney M and Lou Bega’s “Mambo No. 5.”

Major record labels are reportedly negotiating with Suno and Udio for compensation, according to news reports earlier this month.

To detect songs for tagging, Lanternier says Deezer uses the same generators used to create songs to analyze their output.

“We identify patterns because the song creates such a complex signal. There is lots of information in the song,” Lanternier said.

The AI music generators seem to be unable to produce songs without subtle but recognizable patterns, which change constantly.

“So you have to update your tool every day,” Lanternier said. “So we keep generating songs to learn, to teach our algorithm. So we’re fighting AI with AI.”

Fraudsters can earn big money through streaming. Lanternier pointed to a criminal case last year in the U.S., which authorities said was the first ever involving artificially inflated music streaming. Prosecutors charged a man with wire fraud conspiracy, accusing him of generating hundreds of thousands of AI songs and using bots to automatically stream them billions of times, earning at least $10 million.

By WILL WEISSERT

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump said Friday that his director of national intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard, was “wrong” when she previously said that the U.S. believed Iran wasn’t building a nuclear weapon, and he suggested that it would be “very hard to stop” Israel’s strikes on Iran in order to negotiate a possible ceasefire.

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Trump has recently taken a more aggressive public stance toward Tehran as he’s sought more time to weigh whether to attack Iran by striking its well-defended Fordo uranium enrichment facility. Buried under a mountain, the facility is believed to be out of the reach of all but America’s “bunker-buster” bombs.

After landing in New Jersey for an evening fundraiser for his super political action committee, Trump was asked about Gabbard’s comments to Congress in March that U.S. spy agencies believed that Iran wasn’t working on nuclear warheads. The president responded, “Well then, my intelligence community is wrong. Who in the intelligence community said that?”

Informed that it had been Gabbard, Trump said, “She’s wrong.”

In a subsequent post on X, Gabbard said her testimony was taken out of context “as a way to manufacture division.”

“America has intelligence that Iran is at the point that it can produce a nuclear weapon within weeks to months, if they decide to finalize the assembly,” she wrote. “President Trump has been clear that can’t happen, and I agree.”

Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard leaves U.S. Capitol after a Senate Appropriations Subcommittee hearing on Monday, June. 16, 2025, in Washington. (AP Photo/Mariam Zuhaib)

Still, disavowing Gabbard’s previous assessment came a day after the White House said Trump would decide within two weeks whether the U.S. military would get directly involved in the conflict between Israel and Iran. It said seeking additional time was “based on the fact that there’s a substantial chance of negotiations that may or may not take place with Iran in the near future.”

But on Friday, Trump himself seemed to cast doubts on the possibility of talks leading to a pause in fighting between Israel and Iran. He said that, while he might support a ceasefire, Israel’s strikes on Iran could be “very hard to stop.”

Asked about Iran suggesting that, if the U.S. was serious about furthering negotiations, it could call on Israel to stop its strikes, Trump responded, “I think it’s very hard to make that request right now.”

“If somebody is winning, it’s a little bit harder to do than if somebody is losing,” Trump said. “But we’re ready, willing and able, and we’ve been speaking to Iran, and we’ll see what happens.”

The president later added, “It’s very hard to stop when you look at it.”

“Israel’s doing well in terms of war. And, I think, you would say that Iran is doing less well. It’s a little bit hard to get somebody to stop,” Trump said.

Trump campaigned on decrying “endless wars” and has vowed to be an international peacemaker. That’s led some, even among conservatives, to point to Trump’s past criticism of the U.S. invasion of Iraq beginning in 2003 as being at odds with his more aggressive stance toward Iran now.

Trump suggested the two situations were very different, though.

“There were no weapons of mass destruction. I never thought there were. And that was somewhat pre-nuclear. You know, it was, it was a nuclear age, but nothing like it is today,” Trump said of his past criticism of the administration of President George W. Bush.

He added of Iran’s current nuclear program, “It looked like I’m right about the material that they’ve gathered already. It’s a tremendous amount of material.”

Trump also cast doubts on Iran’s developing nuclear capabilities for civilian pursuits, like power generation.

“You’re sitting on one of the largest oil piles anywhere in the world,” he said. “It’s a little bit hard to see why you’d need that.”

By COLLEEN SLEVIN and MEAD GRUVER

DENVER (AP) — The husband of Colorado woman Suzanne Morphew, whose remains were discovered over three years after she was reported missing on Mother’s Day 2020, was arrested again Friday on a first-degree murder charge, authorities said.

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Barry Morphew was arrested Friday in Arizona after a Colorado grand jury returned an indictment Wednesday, three years after the initial case was dropped due to prosecutorial issues with evidence.

His bond was set at $3 million, cash only, according to court documents. The district attorney’s office said in a statement that it is seeking to bring him back to Colorado.

A 2024 autopsy report said Suzanne Morphew died of “unspecified means” but ruled it a homicide. While there was no indication of trauma in her remains, a drug cocktail used to tranquilize wildlife was found in one of her bones, the report said.

A tranquilizer gun and accessories were found in the Morphews’ home, according to investigators.

Barry Morphew has maintained his innocence since his wife disappeared, and his attorney David Beller blasted the new indictment.

“Yet again, the government allows their predetermined conclusion to lead their search for evidence,” Beller said in a statement. “Barry maintains his innocence. The case has not changed, and the outcome will not either.”

The first case was dropped in 2022

Morphew was first charged with murder in May 2021, but prosecutors dropped that case the following year just as Morphew was about to stand trial.

A judge barred prosecutors from calling key witnesses for repeatedly failing to follow rules for turning over evidence in Morphew’s favor. That included DNA from an unknown male that was found in Suzanne Morphew’s SUV. At the time, prosecutors said they wanted more time to find her body.

The judge agreed to drop the case against Morphew but allowed prosecutors the option of filing charges against him later.

Barry Morphew filed a $15 million lawsuit against county officials, accusing them of violating his constitutional rights. His lawyers also filed a complaint asking that the prosecutors be disciplined for allegedly intentionally withholding evidence.

Iris Eytan, who was Morphew’s attorney in 2021 but no longer represents him, said prosecutors “fumbled” the case.

“Not only is he is a loving father, but he was a loving husband,” Eytan told The Associated Press on Friday.

Suzanne Morphew disappeared on Mother’s Day

The mystery surrounding Suzanne Morphew began when the 49-year-old mother of two daughters, who lived near the small town of Salida, was reported missing on Mother’s Day 2020. Suzanne Morphew’s mountain bike and helmet were found in separate spots not far from her home, but investigators suspected the bike had been purposefully thrown down into a ravine because there was no indications of a crash. A week after she went missing, Barry Morphew posted a video on Facebook pleading for her safe return.

“No questions asked, however much they want, I will do whatever it takes to get you back,” he said.

When he was initially charged, the arrest affidavit laying out investigators’ case against Barry Morphew said his wife insisted on leaving him. He later changed his statements as evidence developed.

Morphew, an avid hunter, did not initially tell investigators that he went out of his way as he left for work on Mother’s Day, driving toward the place where his wife’s bicycle helmet was eventually found. Later, he said he went that way because he had seen an elk cross the road, according to the initial arrest affidavit.

Suzanne Morphew’s remains were found in 2023

Colorado Bureau of Investigation agents stumbled upon Suzanne Morphew’s skeletal remains in September 2023 in a shallow grave during an unrelated search near the small southern Colorado town of Moffat, about 40 miles south of the Morphews’ home.

Most of Suzanne Morphew’s bones were recovered and many were “significantly bleached,” according to the affidavit.

Investigators removed a port through which Morphew could receive medicine to treat follicular lymphoma, a type of blood cancer, and found clothing similar to bicyclist clothes she was known to wear. Based on the status of the remains and clothing, a forensic anthropologist theorized that the body decomposed elsewhere, the affidavit says.

Toxicology testing revealed all three drugs in a sedative used for wildlife called “BAM” were in the bones. The presence of a metabolite for one of the drugs, butorphanol, suggested the remains would not have been contaminated with BAM after death, the affidavit says.

The coroner’s office determined the cause of death was “homicide by unspecified means” through intoxication of the three drugs, butorphanol, azaperone and medetomidine.

Investigators linked Barry Morphew to the drugs

Barry Morphew obtained and filled several prescriptions for BAM while living in Indiana, shortly before the Morphews moved to Colorado in 2018. Barry Morphew was a deer farmer in Indiana and allegedly told investigators he used BAM to tranquilize deer in Indiana and Colorado, according to the indictment.

In the area surrounding their home in Colorado, no private citizens or businesses, only Colorado Parks and Wildlife and National Park Service officials, had obtained BAM between 2017 and 2020, records show. No government officials reported missing BAM supplies.

“Ultimately, the prescription records show that when Suzanne Morphew disappeared, only one private citizen living in that entire area of the state had access to BAM: Barry Morphew,” the indictment concluded.

Gruver reported from Cheyenne, Wyoming. Associated Press reporter Jaimie Ding in Seattle contributed.

By JOSH FUNK

Air traffic controllers in Florida briefly lost their radar Friday after a fiber optic line was cut, but the outage didn’t lead to disruptions like what happened after similar outages around the Newark, New Jersey, airport this spring.

Controllers were able to continue directing planes across five states in the Southeast because a backup system kicked in as designed. The Federal Aviation Administration said no flights were disrupted.

The FAA said the radar center in Jacksonville, Florida, continued operating but on alert status because its primary communication line went down. A contractor was working on repairing the severed fiber line Friday afternoon. Authorities didn’t specify what caused the severed fiber line or where it happened.

The FAA didn’t say exactly how long the radar was offline, but when air traffic controllers in a different facility in Philadelphia lost radar twice this spring it took 90 seconds for their systems to reboot after the system went down. Those incidents led to major disruptions at Newark Liberty International Airport in New Jersey because five controllers went on trauma leave after those outages, and that facility in Philadelphia directs planes in and out of the airport.

Hundreds of flights had to be cancelled in Newark because the remaining controllers couldn’t safely handle every flight on the schedule. Operations at that airport have since improved significantly

An FAA spokesperson said there was “no loss of critical air traffic service” in Jacksonville because the backup system kicked in. That center is responsible for planes flying across roughly 160,000 square miles of airspace across most of Alabama, Georgia, Florida, North Carolina and South Carolina.

The problems in Newark were blamed on the failure of aging copper wires that much of the nation’s air traffic control system still relies on. Transportation officials said the Newark problems demonstrated the need for a multi-million-dollar overhaul of the system that they are lobbying Congress to approve.