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A hot new rock band racked up more than 1 million monthly listeners on Spotify before fans learned that the quartet was created entirely via artificial intelligence.
The Velvet Sundown, a band that channels the hazy era of the ’60s and ’70s, hit the impressive milestone barely a month after dropping their debut album Floating on Echoes on June 5.
“Dust on the Wind,” the album’s most popular song, has been streamed more than 1.2 million times. It has claimed the top spot on charts such as Sweden’s “Viral 50” on the service, which tracks the most popular songs in each country.
And amid the group’s growing popularity, an official statement has revealed that everything from the band members’ likenesses to their music had been generated by AI.
“The Velvet Sundown is a synthetic music project guided by human creative direction, and composed, voiced and visualized with the support of artificial intelligence,” the group’s bio on Spotify reads. “This isn’t a trick — it’s a mirror. An ongoing artistic provocation designed to challenge the boundaries of authorship, identity and the future of music itself in the age of AI.”
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It continues, “All characters, stories, music, voices and lyrics are original creations generated with the assistance of artificial intelligence tools employed as creative instruments. Any resemblance to actual places, events or persons — living or deceased — is purely coincidental and unintentional.”
“Not quite human. Not quite machine. The Velvet Sundown lives somewhere in between,” the biography concludes, while the same statement was posted to the group’s X account.
The Velvet Sundown’s AI reveal came days before the impending release of their sophomore album Paper Sun Rebellion, which arrives on Monday, July 14, with 13 new songs.
Up to that point, fans have believed that the group was comprised of four living and breathing humans. A portrait of the group shared on social media shows them behind a sepia-toned filter, smiling for the camera.
Spotify
Dr. Fabian Stephany, an assistant professor for AI and Work at the University of Oxford, addressed the development in a statement shared with Newsweek.
Specifically, the professor called out the ethical questions and the risk that AI poses within the music industry, saying, “Passing off machine-generated music as the work of flesh-and-blood artists risks eroding trust at the very moment authenticity has become a prized commodity.”
“On top of that, generative models necessarily remix vast libraries of copyrighted work,” he added. “The industry has yet to decide whether that counts as fair use, licensed sampling or outright infringement.”
The revelation comes as prominent musicians like Billie Eilish and Katy Perry have spoken out against AI use in music.
In April 2024, several popular stars signed a petition that requested AI creators stop using technology to infiltrate the music industry and other creative fields.
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More recently, this past March, Céline Dion spoke out against AI-generated songs that seemingly featured her voice.
“Please be advised that these recordings are fake and not approved, and are not songs from her official discography,” a representative for the singer wrote on Instagram.
