Like it or not, A.I. has infiltrated almost every facet of our lives and unfortunately it looks like it’s here to stay. A.I. “art” is nothing new, people have been generating pictures, videos, and even music with the use of ChatGPT, Midjourney, and Suno. People have been worried about soulless computer-generated content turning art into a capitalist commodity for a long time and it seems that day might be here with the discovery of a band called The Velvet Sundown.
Who or what is The Velvet Sundown?
If you look up the band’s name on Spotify you’ll be met with an artist page that shows four young men sitting in front of the camera. The band’s discography is pretty impressive with two full albums released this year and a third on the way already. Their music is a mix of folk-sounding lyrics and country-rock instrumentation.
At the time of writing The Velvet Sundown has almost half a million monthly listeners with their most popular song, “Dust on the Wind” boasting 380,000 listens on the music app. It’s not just on Spotify either, the band’s music is also available on other popular streaming services such as Apple Music and YouTube.
It didn’t take long for alarm bells to start ringing among listeners. While it has yet to be confirmed whether or not The Velvet Sundown is actually an A.I. band, listeners believe they already have enough evidence to prove that that is the case.
First of all, the band’s output seems almost inhuman. When you think about the speed at which content is being put out it does seem impossible. While it may seem that way it can be explained, maybe the band had a backlog of content. Also we have seen real musicians with arguably even higher output, for example, Brockhampton released three studio albums between June and December 2017. So it has been done before.
Is the band A.I. generated?
What’s a little harder to explain is the lack of presence from any of the band members online. The description on Spotify lists four members of The Velvet Sundown, “Singer and mellotron player Gabe Farrow, guitarist Lennie West, Milo Raines, who crafts the band’s textured synth sounds, and free spirited percussionist Orion “Rio” Del Mar.” Looking up any of these people fails to bring any results, no social media accounts, no interviews, no footage of live shows, nothing. How can a band have half a million listeners and three albums without ever appearing on camera or in public?
What’s more, people have been looking closely at the image of the four supposed band members and they’ve come to the conclusion that the pic is A.I. generated. While it can be hard to say for sure, the smoothness of their faces, the overly warm lighting, maybe I’m just looking at the picture too hard, but it looks less real the more I look at it. If this isn’t A.I. generated then these guys need to share their skincare routine.
Perhaps most damning of all the evidence is the songs themselves. The voice doesn’t quite sound human and the lyrics seem rather vague and generic. The songs sound very much like content we’ve heard AI churn out in the past. People on TikTok have already expressed concern that Spotify is pushing this sort of music, especially when it pays its real artists so little.
Of course there is a possibility that the internet is wrong and that these guys are real. All of the evidence could be explained away, but with the amount of evidence there is to suggest that The Velvet Sundown aren’t real it seems that’s the most likely option.
