Photos of the band shared online and featured on the album cover were unnaturally smooth and matte, and the guitarist’s hand was unsteady with fused fingers holding his instrument—a classic trademark of AI-generated imagery.
The band’s lyrics were also a perfect mesh of generic anti-war sentiments and other clichés like “nothing lasts forever, but the earth and the sky, it slips away, and all your money won’t be a minute longer.”
The Faux Rockstars were also releasing new albums alarmingly—and inhumanly—fast, releasing two in June alone and another set for mid-July.
The band finally revealed their secret over the weekend.
He updated his Spotify bio on Saturday to reflect the AI twist, ensuring the project wasn’t trying to bamboozle his audience.
“Velvet Sunset is a synthetic music project, guided by human creative direction and composed, dubbed, and visualized with the support of artificial intelligence. This is not a gimmick—it’s a mirror. An ongoing artistic provocation designed to challenge the boundaries of authorship, identity, and the future of music in the age of AI itself,” the biography reads.
Some people who had seen through the band’s ploy early on tried to capitalize on their viral success before the truth came out.
A Quebec-based web security expert posed as a spokesperson for Velvet Sunset under the pseudonym Andrew Frelon, which translates to Hornet in French, and even slipped false information to Rolling Stone magazine about his supposed clients.
But the man behind the frelon quickly confessed that he was just trying to troll people online.
It’s unclear whether Velvet Sunset will face any backlash from Spotify or any other platform where it might be eligible for streaming revenue.
Starting July 15, YouTube announced that it would be cutting all monetization, including ads, for any AI-generated content.
In late June, popular YouTuber Mr.Beast announced a tool that would use AI to create thumbnails for videos. He quickly removed it after receiving backlash for supporting an AI engine, which typically requires massive amounts of energy that would consistently offset his years of environmental work and reforestation efforts.
