A mysterious band named The Velvet Sundown has taken the music world by storm, accumulating hundreds of thousands of plays on Spotify. However, their sudden rise to fame has been overshadowed by widespread speculation that their music and even the band members themselves are generated by artificial intelligence, leading to a complex web of denials, hoaxes, and industry-wide debate.
The Enigma of The Velvet Sundown
The Velvet Sundown emerged seemingly out of nowhere, quickly amassing over 850,000 monthly listeners on Spotify. Despite their popularity, the band's four named musicians have maintained an unusually low profile, with no public interviews, individual social media presence, or records of live performances. This anonymity has fuelled suspicions that the band and their indie ballads are products of AI.
AI Accusations and Hoaxes
- Band's Denial: The Velvet Sundown has publicly denied on social media that their music is AI-generated, though they have not responded to interview requests.
- Rolling Stone Hoax: A spokesman for the band reportedly admitted to Rolling Stone US that their music was created using an AI tool called Suno. However, it was later revealed that the spokesman himself was a hoax, a man named Andrew Frelon, who confessed to deliberately misleading the media.
- Official Statement: The band's Spotify page carries a statement disavowing any affiliation with Frelon and clarifying that an X (formerly Twitter) account claiming to be their official channel is also fake.
- Deezer's Findings: Rival streaming platform Deezer's AI detector tool flagged The Velvet Sundown's music as "100% AI generated."
Broader Implications for the Music Industry
The Velvet Sundown saga highlights growing concerns within the creative arts industry regarding AI's impact.
- Erosion of Reality: Professor Gina Neff of the Minderoo Centre for Technology and Democracy at the University of Cambridge notes that such incidents contribute to a "shaky" collective grip on reality and underscore the importance of protecting online information.
- Copyright and AI: Many musicians are protesting the use of their content to train AI tools. High-profile artists like Sir Elton John and Dua Lipa have campaigned for the UK government to include AI and copyright in new data laws, though their efforts have been unsuccessful to date.
- Concerns from Creators: Ed Newton Rex, founder of Fairly Trained, argues that the situation with The Velvet Sundown exemplifies artists' fears of "theft dressed up as competition," where AI companies use artists' work to create knock-offs, reducing income for human musicians.
- Call for Government Action: Sophie Jones, chief strategy officer at BPI, emphasised that this discussion reinforces the music industry's concerns about AI and music rights, calling for government intervention.
Spotify CEO Daniel Ek has previously stated that while he does not intend to ban AI-generated music, he opposes its use to mimic real artists.
