{"id":3310,"date":"2025-07-01T15:50:42","date_gmt":"2025-07-01T15:50:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/musictechohio.online\/site\/indie-rock-band-velvet-sundown-never-use-ai\/"},"modified":"2025-07-01T15:50:42","modified_gmt":"2025-07-01T15:50:42","slug":"indie-rock-band-velvet-sundown-never-use-ai","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/musictechohio.online\/site\/indie-rock-band-velvet-sundown-never-use-ai\/","title":{"rendered":"“Indie Rock Band” That’s Clearly Using AI Claims That “We Never Use AI”"},"content":{"rendered":"
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An \"indie rock band\" called The Velvet Sundown is now claiming that \"we never use AI\" after being accused of not existing.<\/div>\n

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.”<\/p>\n

After being publicly accused of being the fabrication of AI, an “official” X account<\/a> for the band is now seemingly attempting to control the narrative, or at least to gin up a few more streams.<\/p>\n

“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<\/a>. “Not a single one of these ‘writers’ has reached out, visited a show, or listened beyond the Spotify algorithm.”<\/p>\n

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<\/em>. If that stuff’s all fake, why should we believe that the band’s music \u2014 or its protestations \u2014 are genuine?<\/p>\n

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<\/a> for AI regulation in light of a tidal wave of AI slop<\/a> flooding streaming platforms.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

“As a music maker, it breaks my heart,” one Reddit user wrote<\/a>. “As a music lover and Spotify user, I find it offensive that there is no mention anywhere that it is a fabricated band.”<\/p>\n

“Report this shit man…” they added. “What else can we do?”<\/p>\n

Spotify competitor Deezer also flagged the band’s most recent album<\/a>, “Dust and Silence,” as being “AI-generated content,” noting that “some tracks on this album may have been created using artificial intelligence.”<\/p>\n

In our own investigation<\/a>, we found no evidence that any of its purported “members” actually exist. The band’s Instagram page<\/a> is chock full of images that are clearly AI generated, suggesting that its latest claim to “never use AI” is misleading at best.<\/p>\n

As Stereogum<\/em> points out<\/a>, 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<\/a> that hints at the possible use of an AI text generator, such as ChatGPT.<\/p>\n

“The Velvet Sundown aren\u2019t trying to revive the past,” the blurb reads, using AI’s trademark negation construct. “They\u2019re rewriting it. They sound like the memory of a time that never actually happened\u2026 but somehow they make it feel real.”<\/p>\n

The Velvet Sundown \u2014 a name that appears to be a lazy portmanteau of the legendary psych-rock band The Velvet Underground and Montreal indie outfit Sunset Rubdown \u2014 is now in damage control mode in light of a flood of criticism.<\/p>\n

“This is not a joke,” the band’s apparent X account wrote<\/a>. “This is our music, written in long, sweaty nights in a cramped bungalow in California with real instruments, real minds, and real soul.”<\/p>\n

“Every chord, every lyric, every mistake \u2014 HUMAN,” the tweet reads.<\/p>\n

“Just because we don\u2019t do TikTok dances or livestream our process doesn\u2019t mean we\u2019re fake,” the account wrote in a follow-up<\/a>. “The fact that some blog editors would rather pretend we\u2019re a bunch of machines than admit an unknown band is out here grinding & made something people enjoy is insulting.”<\/p>\n

However, without any actual evidence that the band is “REAL<\/a>” \u2014 a simple video of the band rehearsing in the studio would suffice \u2014 it’s hard to know what to make of its claims. As PC Gamer<\/em> points out<\/a>, The Velvet Sundown may be gaming the algorithms of music streaming platforms by closely mimicking popular artists in a bid for visibility.<\/p>\n

AI-based music-generating tools have also become incredibly sophisticated, allowing practically anybody to create convincing-sounding tracks on the fly.<\/p>\n

In December, The Beatles legend Paul McCartney warned<\/a> that AI “could just take over and we don\u2019t 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.”<\/p>\n

We’ve also seen several AI-generated diss tracks go viral<\/a>, leading to mainstream record labels representing artists like Aubrey “Drake” Graham\u00a0to force music streaming services to remove the offending songs from their platforms.<\/p>\n

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<\/a>, and vocal performances that sound completely inconsistent from track to track, it certainly seems likely.<\/p>\n

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 \u2014 if it even exists \u2014 is lying about never using AI.<\/p>\n

Futurism<\/em> has reached out to the band on X, but has yet to hear back.<\/p>\n

More on the band:<\/strong> An “Indie Rock Band” That Appears to Be Entirely AI-Generated Is Making Alarming Amounts of Money on Spotify<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

The post “Indie Rock Band” That’s Clearly Using AI Claims That “We Never Use AI”<\/a> appeared first on Futurism<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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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…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1516,177,183,118],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3310","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-ai-music","category-artificial-intelligence","category-generative-ai","category-spotify"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/musictechohio.online\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3310","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/musictechohio.online\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/musictechohio.online\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/musictechohio.online\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/musictechohio.online\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3310"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/musictechohio.online\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3310\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/musictechohio.online\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3310"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/musictechohio.online\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3310"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/musictechohio.online\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3310"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}