\n<\/p>\n
\n\tThe Velvet Sundown<\/a>, an obviously fictional \u201cband\u201d that\u2019s gone viral after somehow racking up over 500,000 monthly listeners on Spotify out of nowhere, used the generative-AI<\/a> platform<\/a> Suno<\/a> in the creation of their songs, and consider themselves an \u201cart hoax,\u201d a band spokesperson reveals to Rolling Stone<\/em>. \u200aOn their X account<\/a>, the \u201cband\u201d fervently and repeatedly denied any AI usage after multiple media outlets reported on their mysterious popularity \u2014 but pseudonymous band spokesperson and \u201cadjunct\u201d member Andrew Frelon now admits, \u201cIt\u2019s marketing. It\u2019s trolling. People before, they didn\u2019t care about what we did, and now suddenly, we\u2019re talking to Rolling Stone<\/em>, so it\u2019s like, \u2018is that wrong?’\u201d\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n \n\t\u201cPersonally, I\u2019m interested in art hoaxes,\u201d Frelon continues. \u201cThe Leeds 13, a group of art students in the U.K., made, like, fake photos of themselves\u00a0spending scholarship money at a beach or something like that, and it became a huge scandal. I think that stuff\u2019s really interesting\u2026. We live in a world now where things that are fake have sometimes even more impact than things that are real. And that\u2019s messed up, but that\u2019s the reality that we face now. So it\u2019s like, should we ignore that reality? Should we ignore these things that kind of exist on a continuum of real versus fake or kind of a blend between the two? Or should we dive into it and just let it be the emerging native language of the internet?\u201d<\/p>\n In the phone conversation Tuesday morning, Frelon originally maintained that AI was used only in brainstorming for the music, then admitted to use of Suno but \u201cnot in the final product,\u201d and finally came to acknowledge that at least some songs (\u201cI don\u2019t want to say which ones\u201d)\u00a0are Suno-generated. \u201cI haven\u2019t admitted that to anyone else,\u201d Frelon says. He also acknowledged employing Suno\u2019s \u201cPersona\u201d feature \u2014 the same one Timbaland is using<\/a> with his controversial AI artist TaTa \u2014\u00a0to maintain a consistent singer\u2019s voice across songs, although he continues to claim that\u2019s not the case on every track.<\/p>\n \n\tSome observers have wondered whether some kind of playlist manipulation was used to build Velvet Sundown\u2019s Spotify listenership, but Frelon dodged that question. \u201c\u200aI\u2019m not running the Spotify backend stuff, so I can\u2019t super speak to exactly how that happened,\u201d he says. \u201cI know we got on some playlists that just have like tons of followers and it seems to have spiraled from there.\u201d Did Frelon and his associates use playlists of their own to boost the process?\u00a0\u201cI don\u2019t have an answer that I can give to you for that because I\u2019m not involved,\u201d he says. \u201cAnd I don\u2019t want to say something that\u2019s not true.\u201d<\/p>\n