A band known as The Velvet Sunset has made waves within the music trade during the last week as a consequence of allegations that the pictures and songs on its Spotify profile have been AI-generated. Now, in a brand new dialog with Rolling Stone, a so-called “adjunct” member of the band, Andrew Frelon, admits to utilizing AI music firm Suno within the creation of a few of its songs, calling the entire mission an “artwork hoax.”
“It’s advertising. It’s trolling. Individuals earlier than, they didn’t care about what we did, and now instantly we’re speaking to Rolling Stone, so it’s like ‘Is that improper?’” Frelon advised the outlet.
Frelon reportedly modified his story a number of instances in the course of the interview. First, he mentioned Suno’s instruments have been solely used within the brainstorming of the writing course of; later, he admitted to utilizing Suno however “not within the closing product.” Later within the interview, he once more modified his place, saying at the least among the songs have been generated by Suno, however that he didn’t “need to say which of them.” Of the instruments in Suno’s suite of options, Frelon cited utilizing Persona, a product launched in October 2024 that enables customers to remix songs on the Suno platform into new genres and types.
The Persona instrument was additionally lately employed by Timbaland within the creation of his controversial AI artist TaTa, which is a part of the artist and producer’s new AI leisure firm Stage Zero. (Timbaland has been a strategic advisor for Suno since October 2024.)
“Personally, I’m inquisitive about artwork hoaxes,” Frelon added within the interview. “The Leeds 13, a gaggle of artwork college students within the U.Okay., made, like, faux photographs of themselves spending scholarship cash at a seaside or one thing like that, and it turned an enormous scandal. I believe that stuff’s actually attention-grabbing … We reside in a world now the place issues which might be faux have generally much more affect than issues which might be actual. And that’s tousled, however that’s the truth that we face now. So it’s like, ‘Ought to we ignore that actuality? Ought to we ignore these items that form of exist on a continuum of actual versus faux or form of a mix between the 2? Or ought to we dive into it and simply let or not it’s the rising native language of the web?’”
The Velvet Sunset turned a viral sensation final week after the band’s Spotify profile was posted to Reddit by a person who accused the band of being AI-generated. On the time, Sunset’s high track had simply over 100,000 performs on the platform, however after the Reddit publish spurred widespread dialogue concerning the band — and AI music usually — listens for its high track have climbed to 675,000 and counting.
The band is only one instance of many, nevertheless. French streamer Deezer reported this spring that 18% of songs delivered to them daily at the moment are absolutely AI-generated, equating to about 20,000 new AI songs day by day.
Final month, “A Million Colours” by Vinih Pray turned the first-known AI-generated track to rank on the TikTok charts. The track, which has since been faraway from TikTok, peaked at No. 44 on the TikTok Viral 50 and was utilized by lots of of hundreds of customers on the platform, together with Kylie Jenner, who used the track to soundtrack a make-up tutorial with 1.7 million likes. So far, it has over 1 million performs on Spotify.
To this point, most streaming companies, together with Spotify, do not have policies particular to AI music on their platforms. Among the many streamers, Deezer has taken the lead. Since January, the corporate has spoken out about how the corporate plans to manage AI content material on the platform. Now, something that Deezer’s proprietary AI detection instrument flags as absolutely AI-generated is faraway from its algorithm and is ineligible for playlisting, though customers can nonetheless hearken to the tracks by way of search. All AI songs on the platform may also be tagged to make sure that customers know what they’re listening to. The Velvet Sunset’s artist web page on Deezer at the moment shows this tag.