{"id":3367,"date":"2025-07-03T14:54:14","date_gmt":"2025-07-03T14:54:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/musictechohio.online\/site\/creator-indie-band-ai-admitted\/"},"modified":"2025-07-03T14:54:14","modified_gmt":"2025-07-03T14:54:14","slug":"creator-indie-band-ai-admitted","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/musictechohio.online\/site\/creator-indie-band-ai-admitted\/","title":{"rendered":"Creator of “Indie Band” Who Insisted It Wasn’t AI-Generated Just Admitted the Truth"},"content":{"rendered":"
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The person behind a \"band\" that sparked a heated debate for heavily relying on generative AI has finally admitted the truth.<\/div>\n

A “band” that sparked a heated debate for heavily relying on generative AI \u2014 and still somehow accumulating over half a million listeners on Spotify \u2014 has finally admitted the truth.<\/p>\n

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

It was a preposterous claim that flew in the face of a mountain of damning evidence<\/a>, from clearly AI-generated images of the band’s four fictional members to a lazily-written bio that\u00a0fabricated an accolade from\u00a0Billboard<\/em> and bore other hallmarks of having been spewed out by something like OpenAI’s ChatGPT.<\/p>\n

Now, the creator of the whole thing, who’s calling himself Andrew Frelon, revealed in an interview with Rolling Stone<\/em><\/a> that \u2014 shocker! \u2014 The Velvet Sundown never really existed.<\/p>\n

Frelon told the magazine that it was an “art hoax.”<\/p>\n

“It’s marketing,” he added. “It’s trolling.”<\/p>\n

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

“People before, they didn\u2019t care about what we did, and now suddenly, we\u2019re talking to Rolling Stone<\/em>, so it\u2019s like, \u2018Is that wrong?'” Frelon told Rolling Stone<\/em>.<\/p>\n

“Personally, I\u2019m 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.”<\/p>\n

“And that\u2019s messed up, but that\u2019s the reality that we face now,” Frelon said.<\/p>\n

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

However, he claimed no wrongdoing as far as cashing in on Spotify royalties is concerned.<\/p>\n

“I\u2019m not running the Spotify backend stuff, so I can\u2019t super speak to exactly how that happened,” Frelon told Rolling Stone<\/em>. “I know we got on some playlists that just have like tons of followers, and it seems to have spiraled from there.”<\/p>\n

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<\/a>, threatening the royalties of human artists.<\/p>\n

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?<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

“Most fake bands still\u00a0won\u2019t\u00a0<\/em>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\u2019s business point of view it\u2019s not even clear that this is a bad thing to be \u2018protected\u2019 against,” former Spotify data alchemist Glenn McDonald told Rolling Stone<\/em>.<\/p>\n

More on the band:<\/strong> “Indie Rock Band” That’s Clearly Using AI Claims That “We Never Use AI”<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

The post Creator of “Indie Band” Who Insisted It Wasn’t AI-Generated Just Admitted the Truth<\/a> appeared first on Futurism<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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A “band” that sparked a heated debate for heavily relying on generative AI \u2014 and still somehow accumulating over half a million listeners on Spotify \u2014 has finally admitted the…<\/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-3367","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\/3367","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=3367"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/musictechohio.online\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3367\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/musictechohio.online\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3367"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/musictechohio.online\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3367"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/musictechohio.online\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3367"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}