Creator of “Indie Band” Who Insisted It Wasn’t AI-Generated Just Admitted the Truth

A “band” that sparked a heated debate for heavily relying on generative AI — and still somehow accumulating over half a million listeners on Spotify — has finally admitted the truth.

Earlier this week, a self-proclaimed “indie rock band” called The Velvet Sundown claimed on its “official” X account that it “never” used any AI, accusing “so-called ‘journalists'” of “pushing the lazy, baseless theory that The Velvet Sundown is ‘AI-generated’ with zero evidence.”

It was a preposterous claim that flew in the face of a mountain of damning evidence, from clearly AI-generated images of the band’s four fictional members to a lazily-written bio that fabricated an accolade from Billboard and bore other hallmarks of having been spewed out by something like OpenAI’s ChatGPT.

Now, the creator of the whole thing, who’s calling himself Andrew Frelon, revealed in an interview with Rolling Stone that — shocker! — The Velvet Sundown never really existed.

Frelon told the magazine that it was an “art hoax.”

“It’s marketing,” he added. “It’s trolling.”

Despite facing some scorching criticism online for brazenly ripping off other people’s work and undermining the livelihoods of musicians everywhere, Frelon argued that all press is good press.

“People before, they didn’t care about what we did, and now suddenly, we’re talking to Rolling Stone, so it’s like, ‘Is that wrong?'” Frelon told Rolling Stone.

“Personally, I’m interested in art hoaxes,” he added. “We live in a world now where things that are fake have sometimes even more impact than things that are real.”

“And that’s messed up, but that’s the reality that we face now,” Frelon said.

Frelon band member admitted to using Suno, an AI-powered music-generating app, to come up with the band’s uninspired songs.

However, he claimed no wrongdoing as far as cashing in on Spotify royalties is concerned.

“I’m not running the Spotify backend stuff, so I can’t super speak to exactly how that happened,” Frelon told Rolling Stone. “I know we got on some playlists that just have like tons of followers, and it seems to have spiraled from there.”

The use of AI in the world of music production has been a lightning rod, generating high-profile lawsuits and open letters signed by hundreds of artists calling for meaningful regulation. Music streaming platforms have been inundated with a tidal wave of AI slop, threatening the royalties of human artists.

In short, Frelon’s milquetoast admission that it was all a “hoax” is unlikely to sit well with artists. Should they really bend over backwards and admit defeat in light of an inevitable AI takeover?

If anything, the incident highlights some injustices in Spotify’s approach to allowing AI-generated content on its platform. After all, it’s not exactly incentivized to do anything against it.

“Most fake bands still won’t be successful, and of course nobody notices when an AI band gets no listeners, but there are no protections against it happening, and probably from Spotify’s business point of view it’s not even clear that this is a bad thing to be ‘protected’ against,” former Spotify data alchemist Glenn McDonald told Rolling Stone.

More on the band: “Indie Rock Band” That’s Clearly Using AI Claims That “We Never Use AI”