Creator of "Indie Band" Who Insisted It Wasn't AI-Generated Just Admitted the Truth

[bnew]

Creator of "Indie Band" Who Insisted It Wasn't AI-Generated Just Admitted the Truth

The person behind a "band" that sparked a heated debate for heavily relying on generative AI has finally admitted the truth.

futurism.com

Creator of "Indie Band" Who Insisted It Wasn't AI-Generated Just Admitted the Truth​

"It's marketing."​

/ Artificial Intelligence/ Ai Music/ Artificial Intelligence/ Generative Ai

Image by Futurism

A "band" that sparked a heated debate for heavily relying on generative AI — and still somehow accumulating over half a million listeners on Spotify — has finally admitted the truth.

Earlier this week, a self-proclaimed "indie rock band" called The Velvet Sundown claimed on its "official" X account that it "never" used any AI, accusing "so-called 'journalists'" of "pushing the lazy, baseless theory that The Velvet Sundown is 'AI-generated' with zero evidence."

It was a preposterous claim that flew in the face of a mountain of damning evidence, from clearly AI-generated images of the band's four fictional members to a lazily-written bio that fabricated an accolade from Billboard and bore other hallmarks of having been spewed out by something like OpenAI's ChatGPT.

Now, the creator of the whole thing, who's calling himself Andrew Frelon, revealed in an interview with Rolling Stone that — shocker! — The Velvet Sundown never really existed.

Frelon told the magazine that it was an "art hoax."

"It's marketing," he added. "It's trolling."

Despite facing some scorching criticism online for brazenly ripping off other people's work and undermining the livelihoods of musicians everywhere, Frelon argued that all press is good press.

"People before, they didn’t care about what we did, and now suddenly, we’re talking to Rolling Stone, so it’s like, ‘Is that wrong?'" Frelon told Rolling Stone.

"Personally, I’m interested in art hoaxes," he added. "We live in a world now where things that are fake have sometimes even more impact than things that are real."

"And that’s messed up, but that’s the reality that we face now," Frelon said.

Frelon band member admitted to using Suno, an AI-powered music-generating app, to come up with the band's uninspired songs.

However, he claimed no wrongdoing as far as cashing in on Spotify royalties is concerned.

"I’m not running the Spotify backend stuff, so I can’t super speak to exactly how that happened," Frelon told Rolling Stone. "I know we got on some playlists that just have like tons of followers, and it seems to have spiraled from there."

The use of AI in the world of music production has been a lightning rod, generating high-profile lawsuits and open letters signed by hundreds of artists calling for meaningful regulation. Music streaming platforms have been inundated with a tidal wave of AI slop, threatening the royalties of human artists.

In short, Frelon's milquetoast admission that it was all a "hoax" is unlikely to sit well with artists. Should they really bend over backwards and admit defeat in light of an inevitable AI takeover?

If anything, the incident highlights some injustices in Spotify's approach to allowing AI-generated content on its platform. After all, it's not exactly incentivized to do anything against it.

"Most fake bands still won’t be successful, and of course nobody notices when an AI band gets no listeners, but there are no protections against it happening, and probably from Spotify’s business point of view it’s not even clear that this is a bad thing to be ‘protected’ against," former Spotify data alchemist Glenn McDonald told Rolling Stone.

 

[bnew]

"Indie Rock Band" That's Clearly Using AI Claims That "We Never Use AI"

An "indie rock band" called The Velvet Sundown is now claiming that "we never use AI" after being accused of not existing.

futurism.com

"Indie Rock Band" That's Clearly Using AI Claims That "We Never Use AI"​

"Every chord, every lyric, every mistake — HUMAN."​

/ Artificial Intelligence/ Ai Music/ Generative Ai/ Spotify

Image by The Velvet Sundown

Update: the creator of the band has admitted that he used AI to create its music.

An "indie rock band" called The Velvet Sundown, which is marketing its music with AI-generated pictures of members that don't appear to exist, is now claiming that "we never use AI."

After being publicly accused of being the fabrication of AI, an "official" X account for the band is now seemingly attempting to control the narrative, or at least to gin up a few more streams.

"Absolutely crazy that so-called 'journalists' keep pushing the lazy, baseless theory that The Velvet Sundown is 'AI-generated' with zero evidence," the account wrote in a Sunday tweet. "Not a single one of these 'writers' has reached out, visited a show, or listened beyond the Spotify algorithm."

Anything's possible, but it's a hard denial to believe. All the band's "photos" are obviously AI-generated, and its bio previously referenced a nonexistent writeup by Billboard. If that stuff's all fake, why should we believe that the band's music — or its protestations — are genuine?

The incident highlights the turbulent effect that generative AI is having on the music industry. It's been a hotly debated topic, with numerous mainstream artists voicing their support for AI regulation in light of a tidal wave of AI slop flooding streaming platforms.

The Velvet Sundown, which is currently racking up more than 550,000 listens per month on Spotify, drew scrutiny on social media when users raised red flags about the band's authenticity.

"As a music maker, it breaks my heart," one Reddit user wrote. "As a music lover and Spotify user, I find it offensive that there is no mention anywhere that it is a fabricated band."

"Report this shyt man..." they added. "What else can we do?"

Spotify competitor Deezer also flagged the band's most recent album, "Dust and Silence," as being "AI-generated content," noting that "some tracks on this album may have been created using artificial intelligence."

In our own investigation, we found no evidence that any of its purported "members" actually exist. The band's Instagram page is chock full of images that are clearly AI generated, suggesting that its latest claim to "never use AI" is misleading at best.

As Stereogum points out, the band's bio on Spotify also shows plenty of evidence of having been generated by an AI. It also happens to deploy a highly suspicious sentence structure that hints at the possible use of an AI text generator, such as ChatGPT.

"The Velvet Sundown aren’t trying to revive the past," the blurb reads, using AI's trademark negation construct. "They’re rewriting it. They sound like the memory of a time that never actually happened… but somehow they make it feel real."

The Velvet Sundown — a name that appears to be a lazy portmanteau of the legendary psych-rock band The Velvet Underground and Montreal indie outfit Sunset Rubdown — is now in damage control mode in light of a flood of criticism.

"This is not a joke," the band's apparent X account wrote. "This is our music, written in long, sweaty nights in a cramped bungalow in California with real instruments, real minds, and real soul."

"Every chord, every lyric, every mistake — HUMAN," the tweet reads.

"Just because we don’t do TikTok dances or livestream our process doesn’t mean we’re fake," the account wrote in a follow-up. "The fact that some blog editors would rather pretend we’re a bunch of machines than admit an unknown band is out here grinding & made something people enjoy is insulting."

However, without any actual evidence that the band is "REAL" — a simple video of the band rehearsing in the studio would suffice — it's hard to know what to make of its claims. As PC Gamer points out, The Velvet Sundown may be gaming the algorithms of music streaming platforms by closely mimicking popular artists in a bid for visibility.

AI-based music-generating tools have also become incredibly sophisticated, allowing practically anybody to create convincing-sounding tracks on the fly.

In December, The Beatles legend Paul McCartney warned that AI "could just take over and we don’t want that to happen, particularly for the young composers and writers [for] who, it may be the only way they['re] gonna make a career."

We've also seen several AI-generated diss tracks go viral, leading to mainstream record labels representing artists like Aubrey "Drake" Graham to force music streaming services to remove the offending songs from their platforms.

It's still unclear whether The Velvet Sundown's music was the output of a generative AI. But considering their incredibly bland and generic lyrics, and vocal performances that sound completely inconsistent from track to track, it certainly seems likely.

In short, even if the music was recorded by real human artists, the blatantly AI-generated images on its social media pages strongly suggest that the band — if it even exists — is lying about never using AI.

Futurism has reached out to the band on X, but has yet to hear back.

 

[Wildin]

Saw this on my feed. Didn't want to watch and fukk up the algorithm.

Is the music good?