Spotify will now start verifying artist pages. In a new feature announced on Thursday, Spotify said that it will give a “Verified by Spotify” badge to artists who comply with Spotify’s policies, have consistent listeners, and have an “identifiable artist presence both on and off-platform.” With the new initiative, Spotify aims to combat something that has become a little bit of a headache for the company and a big headache for listeners: AI-generated music. The AI slopification of music really became a mainstream conversation point last year, when a rock band with a million Spotify streams called The Velvet Sundown turned out to be completely AI-generated. The incident caused outrage and some shame on social media among fans who were unable to tell the difference, but it just keeps happening . Music streaming platform Deezer found in a survey late last year that an overwhelming majority of people cannot tell AI-generated music apart from songs written and performed by actual humans.…