Is the Velvet Sundown an AI band? Many on the internet sure think so

The Velvet Sundown is the most-talked-about band of the moment, but not for the reason you might expect.

The “indie rock band,” which has gained more than 634,000 Spotify listeners in just a few weeks, has spoken out in response to accusations that the group is AI-generated.

The suspicions first surfaced on Reddit last week, where users discussed the band’s sudden appearance in their Discovery Weekly playlists on Spotify. The Velvet Sundown exhibits several common indicators of AI involvement: eerie, uncanny-valley-style images, a now-deleted fabricated Billboard quote in its Spotify bio, and virtually no internet presence prior to last month.

As the speculation picked up media attention, an X account claiming to represent the band responded to the rumors: “Absolutely crazy that so-called ‘journalists’ keep pushing the lazy, baseless theory that The Velvet Sundown is ‘AI-generated’ with zero evidence.”

The post went on to read: “This is not a joke. 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.”

Adding to the confusion, the X account that posted the denial is not the one linked from the band’s official Spotify page. In other words, multiple social media profiles appear to be representing the band, all of them claiming to be official.

When Fast Company reached out to the X account that first posted last week, an apparent spokesperson for the band tried to clarify the situation.

“There are a couple Twitter accounts floating around because different members have been responding in different ways,” the spokesperson wrote in an email to Fast Company. “We’re a collective, and not everyone agrees on how to handle the attention.” They added that the ambiguity is “part of the story” and is helping to get “people curious about diving down the rabbit hole.”

They also admitted to having used “some AI tools in the process,” mostly for “press visuals and experimenting with aesthetic ideas.” Still, they insisted, “the core of this has always been about human musicianship.”

According to its Spotify bio, the Velvet Sundown is a “four-piece” consisting of “singer and mellotron player Gabe Farrow, guitarist Lennie West, Milo Rains, who crafts the band’s textured synth sounds, and free-spirited percussionist Orion ‘Rio’ Del Mar.”

The band maintains that its two full-length albums are “written, played, and produced by real people,” adding, “No generative audio tools. The textures and glitches that people point to as ‘proof’ are just from lo-fi gear, weird mic setups, tape loops, that sort of thing.”

Whether AI is involved or not, the controversy highlights the growing conversation around generative AI in the music industry. Deezer, a streaming service that flags AI-generated music, recently reported receiving more than 20,000 fully AI-created tracks per day.

The Velvet Sundown, for its part, defends the artistic freedom to experiment. “For us, this has always been about making strange, emotional music and exploring how to present it in interesting ways. It might not fit neatly into anyone’s expectations, but it’s honest to what we’re trying to do.”

https://www.fastcompany.com/91362526/is-the-velvet-sundown-an-ai-band-many-on-the-internet-sure-think-so?partner=rss&utm_source=rss&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=rss+fastcompany&utm_content=rss