Thu, 03 Jul 2025

Thu, 03 Jul 2025 Viral band finds itself at the centre of AI claims and hoaxes

Velvet Sundown has racked up hundreds of thousands of streams on Spotify - without anyone even being sure if it's real.

* The Velvet Sundown, a band with over 850,000 monthly listeners on Spotify, has been accused of being an AI-generated entity.
* Despite having a verified page and no records of live performances or individual social media accounts for its members, the band's music has been streamed hundreds of thousands of times.
* A spokesman claimed that the band's music was generated using an AI tool called Suno, but later admitted it was a hoax to fool the media.
* The band denies being AI-generated and claims to have no affiliation with the fake spokesman or his official channel on X.
* An AI detector tool from rival music streaming platform Deezer flagged the band's music as "100% AI generated", while Spotify did not respond to a request for comment.
* The controversy has highlighted concerns about the impact of AI on the creative arts industry, with musicians and experts calling for greater protection of artists' rights.
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