Splittingtens superfan P$ sent me a post about this mysterious new band called the Velvet Sundown, so shout out to him for thinking of the blog.
They’re on Spotify & Apple popping up on Discover Weekly’s across the platform, but everything about them points to it being AI. Below is the feature picture of the band on their profile which is blatantly AI, though you could argue they had an AI render a cooler image of the actual members.
Then there’s the band description on Spotify which almost reads like you prompted chat GPT “write a description for a cool alt-rock bluesy soulful band, but make it entirely obvious that it’s being written by Chat GPT“. Nothing comes up when you Google any of the members, almost to a concerning extent. It’s like they made up real looking names that explicitly don’t exist online. There’s no one to even confuse them with.
Then there’s music itself. I would say it’s generically good, pretty catchy, solid instrumentals, good vocals. But the lyrics throughout the album in particular lend themselves to being AI. It feels like you’re listening what an AI would come up with as ‘deep‘ lyrics, very similar to their bio. The trouble is, as we’ve discussed, that once you have it in your head that something may be AI, you don’t look at it the same way. Anyone about to listen below is already tainted by confirmation bias.
So wait, who are these guys?
No one knows! Is this a Spotify creation? Part of their grand plan to push AI music so they don’t have to pay artists?
Or is this some kid in his garage coming up with all of this and putting it on Spotify to make his own money?
I don’t know. But this is the beginning. It’s no longer an AI is coming! It’s here. This particular version, though extremely impressive, still has some red flags indicating it’s AI. But we’re a short way away from hundreds, if not thousands, of ‘bands’ like this popping up with increasingly complex / higher quality music, to the point where most people won’t know or care if the music they’re hearing is made by man or machine.
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