"Indie Band" Says Claims Their Music Is AI-Generated Is a Hoax, Then Admits It's Actually AI-Generated

The point is to "provoke" artists.

Hoax Squared

The jig is officially up.

After an "indie rock band" called The Velvet Sundown refused to admit last week that its output was a lazy amalgamation of AI-generated slop, the outfit is now singing a dramatically different tune.

As Rolling Stone reports, the band's Spotify bio has been revised to clarify that it's a "synthetic music project" and an "ongoing artistic provocation designed to challenge the boundaries of authorship, identity, and the future of music itself in the age of AI."

Adding to the confusion, last week the magazine talked to a man identifying himself as the project's "spokesperson," who called himself Andrew Frelon but turned out to be an impostor.

"It's marketing," he said, referring to The Velvet Sundown as an "art hoax" and "trolling."

Then, the story got even more confusing when a separate account that claimed to be behind the band tried to distance itself from Fremon's claims.

"We have no affiliation with this individual, nor any evidence confirming their identity or existence," the account wrote.

Smashed Mirror

To be clear, it didn't take much reading between the lines to realize everything related to the band, from blatantly AI-generated images on their Instagram to insipid and uninspired lyrics in their music, was the product of an algorithm.

So the latest update from the band's purported social media channels — that it's a "mirror" and "ongoing artistic provocation" that lives somewhere between "human" and "machine" — isn't exactly a major revelation.

But whether the viral stunt will kickstart a meaningful conversation surrounding the use of AI in the music industry remains dubious at best. If anything, The Velvet Sundown highlighted glaring injustices in how music streaming services like Spotify remunerate human artists. The fictitious troupe amassed just shy of 1,000,000 monthly listeners on the platform — while real artists continue to struggle for virtually any recognition at all.

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