We've been familiar with fake bands for many years and know the animated proxy for real-life human flesh bags that compose and play songs: The Archies, Prozzak, and Gorillaz are just a few examples.
If you want to make it a little more complicated, there's Japan's Reconstruction Miku, the creation of holographic holographic that allows you to perform live concerts using what Yamaha has developed called the Bocolloid Singing Comprehensive Technology. But she could not play without human-created music.
Do they all have in common? We know they are fake. Today… well, it's becoming hard to tell what we are given.
When I first started talking about artificial intelligence a few years ago, some wondered how long it would take to have an AI music star. Technically, it seems possible, if not the fact that AI is not very intelligent. It is a very powerful form of imitation, but it does not have the emotions necessary to write compelling music for the human soul. The music generated by AI programs is based on analyzing millions of data points in the form of music written by flesh and blood musicians.
I read somewhere – and I'm paraphrasing – “I can't write original songs like Tammy Winnett's divorce until the AI program falls in love and experiences a painful breakup.”
Of course, there were attempts. In 2019 there was Brouhaha around Fn Meka. FnMeka is a virtual rapper with over 10 million followers on Tiktok and featured deals and partnerships between Xbox and Amazon. FN Meka was “signed” to universal music before people began attacking creation for the diversion of black culture, the use of stereotypes, and the way this would drop N-word. Universal had to drop the FN mecha and apologize. However, this was not autonomous. FN Meka was built through collaborations between artists, singers, producers, coders and programmers.
But that was the case. Now we live in an age where generative AI is far better at fake things in a compelling way. Mubert, Aiva, Soundful, Anthropic and other programs can not only spit out full songs based on simple text prompts, but also create music videos to match them. And it takes just a few seconds.
Musicians are justly concerned about this. Their labor is used to train robot replacements without permission and compensation. Still, it's just AI, right? And when you are presented with an AI song, you can feel it. We humans never accept perfect AI artists.
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Last month there was a lot of talk about Velvet Sundown, a rock band with four scary members. The group attracted nearly 750,000 listeners on Spotify every month within less than a month. This is an impressive achievement for all actions, not to mention brand new. They have already released two albums and the third set will be dropped on July 14th. This totals 39 songs in five weeks. The speculation is that this is a false creation.
Someone (or something) posted to the X-Blast critics, assuming that Velvet's Sundown is AI. In a provocation to music journalists, the post states, “The number of journalists who simply don't check in to **real people* is incredible. Another post reads, “They said we weren't real. Maybe you aren't either.” Another: “Many news outlets are incorrectly reporting that we are AI-generated bands,” another message states.
But anyone who tried to reach the band failed. Domain Velvetsundown.com leads to extremely dangerous squatting sites that promote plastic surgery.
French streaming site Deezer slapped the AI label on Velvet Sundown, saying the new AI-Otection Tech “it is possible that some tracks on this album were created using artificial intelligence.” The person behind the group (whatever? “We reached out to Deezer to remove the AI-generated labels they accidentally applied to our music. They said they would do that.” But so far, nothing.
Music Ally, a music industry website investigating the situation, has asked French AI detection company Ircam Amplity to run a Velvet Sundown track via a BS detector. When the analysis returned, 10 out of 13 songs were declared A-Generated with a trust score of 100 out of 100. Two scored 98. For example, a photograph of one group is characterized by anomalies like a guitar that was accidentally stringed and a stratocaster with apparently no pickups.
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What's driving this? The best guess for Ircam Amplify is the V4.5 model called Suno. This points to those who have mastered the finer points of Snow in a very impressive way. And since Spotify has three-quarters of its 1 million listeners, this could turn out to be quite profitable. But it may also be just proof of the power of AI and songwriting, artistic mischief, or concept for those with too much time in the hands. Some have suggested that this could be a clever marketing scheme launched by a real band.
truth? That's a hoax. The band “Spokesman” said the same. “Art hoax,” they said.
All this would have been impressive if Velvet's Sundown had music that was in line with the eraist music of today's music. Instead, it's a decent unpleasant thing that wouldn't sound in the 70s or 80s. It's ingenious and adjacent to boredom if I have to say it. (Try Interlude on Spotify.) Then again, there are a lot of modern pop today.
If velvet's sundown is an outlier, that's one thing. it's not. Check out Aventhis, an outlaw country artist with no obvious physical form. But he – it has over 1 million Spotify listeners on one million tracks a month. (Behind David Viera by this name is a kind of real-life lyricist, but he says, “() The voice and image are created with the help of AI. The lyrics are written by me.”
Then there's the internal demon, another outlaw country…the one with 700,000 Spotify listeners. The truck entitled River Bones contains approximately 2 million streams. Everything about the demons inside, including images from the official Instagram page, is clearly fake. Do you want a product? That is also available. And when you start listening to such entities on Spotify, don't be surprised if the algorithm throws your way a little more: Nick Hustles, Smoothies, Velvet Funk, King Willnius, Hyperdrive Sound.
So, what do we do with this? Is this more AI slop? Will the streaming music platform go further? What kind of copyright infringement may be involved? Is this the tip of the iceberg when it comes to music fans who employ music created by robots that stole the souls of real-life musicians? Perhaps others will see this as just another music manufacturing tool.
We reached the point with AI, which we no longer able to trust our eyes and ears. What's the real thing already?
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