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

Update: there's been even more drama, but the upshot is that the band has copped to using AI -- more details here.

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 shit 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.

More on the band: An "Indie Rock Band" That Appears to Be Entirely AI-Generated Is Making Alarming Amounts of Money on Spotify