Making art utilized to be a distinctively human undertaking, however makers have actually discovered to boil down human imagination with generative AI. Whether that material counts as “art” depends upon who you ask, however Spotify does not discriminate. A brand-new band called The Velvet Sundown debuted on Spotify this month and has actually currently collected majority a million listeners. By all looks, The Velvet Sundown is not a genuine band– it’s AI.

While numerous artists are emphatically opposed to utilizing AI, some have actually leaned into the pattern to help with music production. It does not appear like there’s an artist behind this group. In less than a month, The Velvet Sundown has actually launched 2 albums on Spotify, entitled “Floating On Echoes” and “Dust and Silence.” A 3rd album is launching in 2 weeks. The tracks have a timeless rock ambiance with a cacophony of echoey instruments and a dash of autotune. If among these tunes turned up in a mix, you may not discover anything is awry. Listen to one after another, however, and the dull muddiness exposes them as a device development.

Some listeners started to have doubts about The Velvet Sundown’s presence over the previous week, with numerous Reddit and X threads mentioning the absence of proven details on the band. The bio notes 4 members, none of whom appear to exist beyond The Velvet Sundown’s album listings and social networks. The group’s tunes have actually been inexplicably contributed to a great deal of user-created playlists, which has actually assisted swell its listener base in a couple of brief weeks. When Spotify users started observing The Velvet Sundown’s obvious usage of AI, the profile had around 300,000 listeners. It’s now over 500,000 in less than a week.

When The Velvet Sundown established an Instagram account on June 27, all doubts were put to rest– these “people” are undoubtedly AI. We might be past the age of having the ability to determine AI by counting fingers, however there are a lot of strange disparities in these pictures. In one Instagram post, the band declares to have actually gotten hamburgers to commemorate the success of the very first 2 albums, however there are a lot of hamburgers and too couple of plates, and the food and beverage are positioned relatively at random around the table. The band members themselves likewise have that unrealistically smooth and in proportion appearance we see in AI-generated images.