The Velvet Sundown isn’t real after all. The indie rock band recently broke onto the scene, racking up more than 1 million monthly listeners on Spotify. All was not what it seemed, though, as the band has admitted that it’s 100 percent AI-generated.
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“The Velvet Sundown is a synthetic music project guided by human creative direction, and composed, voiced, and visualized with the support of artificial intelligence,” an update to The Velvet Sundown’s Spotify page read. “This isn’t a trick – it’s a mirror. An ongoing artistic provocation designed to challenge the boundaries of authorship, identity, and the future of music itself in the age of AI.”
“All characters, stories, music, voices and lyrics are original creations generated with the assistance of artificial intelligence tools employed as creative instruments,” the band’s bio continued. “Any resemblance to actual places, events or persons -living or deceased- is purely coincidental and unintentional.”
The statement ended by insisting, “Not quite human. Not quite machine. The Velvet Sundown lives somewhere in between.”
What to Know About The Velvet Sundown
Speculation about the origins of the band began circulating as quickly as they appeared. Questions arose since there seemed to be no online history about the group or its supposed members. Pictures of the group also appeared just slightly off, while their songs where chock full of overused cliches.
The fact that they released two albums—Floating on Echoes and Dust and Silence—in June alone also led people to wonder what was going on.
However, The Velvet Sundown gained credibility when it appeared on multiple Spotify playlists.
Glenn McDonald, a former data alchemist for the streamer, told Rolling Stone that the band’s playlist inclusion is likely because Spotify now accepts payments to boost placement.
Additionally, he told the outlet, Spotify is moving away from having humans pick songs for their playlists. Instead, he said, the company is using an algorithm that “can pick songs for recommendations based on characteristics of their audio.”
Spotify has yet to speak out about the situation.
Dr. Fabian Stephany, an AI expert and professor, expressed concern about what The Velvet Sundown’s rise means for the future.
“When an act like The Velvet Sundown racks up more than a million monthly listeners on Spotify, it punctures the long-held belief that writing songs that move people is a uniquely human talent,” he told Newsweek. “If algorithms can now evoke emotion, we have to, once again, rethink what truly separates human and machine creativity.”
Photo by Ryan McVay via Getty Images
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