A mysterious band known as The Velvet Sundown has garnered significant attention on Spotify, accumulating hundreds of thousands of plays within weeks of its appearance. Despite its rapid rise to popularity, boasting over 850,000 monthly listeners and a verified page on the music streaming platform, the true identity and nature of the band remain shrouded in mystery. None of the four named musicians have granted interviews or appear to maintain individual social media profiles, and there are no recorded instances of live performances, fueling widespread speculation that their music, and possibly the band members themselves, are generated by artificial intelligence (AI).

The band has publicly denied these AI accusations on social media, yet their evasiveness extends to declining interview requests from outlets like the BBC. Further complicating the narrative, a report by Rolling Stone US initially claimed that the band's spokesman had confessed to using an AI tool called Suno for music generation. However, this report was swiftly retracted when the spokesman, identified as Andrew Frelon, was revealed to be a hoaxer, admitting he orchestrated a deliberate plot to deceive the media. In response, a statement on The Velvet Sundown's official Spotify page disavowed any association with Frelon, asserting a lack of evidence regarding his identity or existence. The band also clarified that an account on X purporting to be their official channel is, in fact, fake.

The auditory experience of The Velvet Sundown's music, characterized by indie ballads with guitar instrumentation and male vocals, is generally described as easy-listening, if somewhat bland. Lyrics such as "eyes like film in faded light, dreams walk barefoot into the night" and "ash and velvet, smoke and flame, calling out in freedom's name" are sufficiently generic to be plausibly either AI-generated or human-penned. Nevertheless, rival streaming service Deezer's AI detection tool definitively flagged the band's music as "100% AI generated." Spotify, for its part, has not commented on The Velvet Sundown specifically, though CEO Daniel Ek has previously stated that while the platform has no intention of banning AI-generated music, he opposes its use to mimic existing artists.

This peculiar case highlights a broader, unsettling challenge facing the creative arts industry regarding AI. Professor Gina Neff of the Minderoo Centre for Technology and Democracy at the University of Cambridge emphasized that whether The Velvet Sundown is an AI band might seem trivial, but it underscores a growing fragility in our collective grasp on reality. The story resonates with deep-seated fears about losing control over AI and accentuates the critical importance of safeguarding online information and authenticity. Hundreds of musicians worldwide have voiced strong objections and actively protested the practice of AI companies leveraging their copyrighted content to train AI music generation tools, arguing it constitutes unethical exploitation.

The concerns within the music industry have spurred calls for legislative action. Prominent artists such as Sir Elton John and Dua Lipa, alongside numerous members of the House of Lords, championed a campaign urging the UK government to incorporate AI and copyright provisions into new legislation concerning data use and access. Despite their efforts, this particular campaign proved unsuccessful. The UK government has, however, committed to conducting a separate, ongoing consultation specifically on the intersection of AI and copyright, acknowledging the complexities of the issue.

Industry advocates, such as Ed Newton Rex, founder of Fairly Trained – an organization advocating for AI firms to respect creators' rights – view the controversy surrounding The Velvet Sundown as a stark validation of artists' long-standing anxieties. He described the situation as "theft dressed up as competition," asserting that AI companies illicitly use artists' work to develop their products, subsequently inundating the market with inferior imitations, thereby diminishing financial opportunities for human musicians. Similarly, Sophie Jones, chief strategy officer at BPI, reiterated that this ongoing discussion strongly reinforces the critical concerns raised by the music industry and artist community regarding AI and music rights, underscoring the urgent need for decisive governmental intervention.