The new band that wasn't: AI created Velvet Sundown
AI generated image
Photo:
Spotify
When Velvet Sundown recently released its new album, it made a rapid rise through the Spotify charts and attracted nearly two million monthly listeners.
Not bad for a band that didn't exist before June, and actually, doesn't really exist at all. Spotify has now changed the band's bio to confirm the music's been created using artificial intelligence, while "guided by human creative direction".
"It's not a trick" - the bio states - "it's a mirror".
So are we through the looking glass when it comes to how our creative content is generated, thanks to AI?
Can we trust our ears?
And where does it leave the artists whose work it's probably been trained on?
Dr Joshua Yuvaraj has been considering this, he's a senior lecturer in the faculty of law at the University of Auckland.
He also a co-director of the New Zealand Centre for Intellectual Property...and a musician himself.
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