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AI-generated ‘Baling-Pengkalan Hulu cable car' dupes KL couple into 300km trip, officials explain viral news clip is fake
AI-generated ‘Baling-Pengkalan Hulu cable car' dupes KL couple into 300km trip, officials explain viral news clip is fake

Malay Mail

time20 hours ago

  • Malay Mail

AI-generated ‘Baling-Pengkalan Hulu cable car' dupes KL couple into 300km trip, officials explain viral news clip is fake

BALING, July 4 — Authorities have dismissed a viral video claiming the existence of a cable car linking Pengkalan Hulu in Perak to Baling in Kedah, saying it was generated using artificial intelligence (AI). Sinar Harian quoted Baling District Officer Yazlan Sunardie Che Yahaya confirming that no such project exists and urged the public not to be misled by digital content, however convincing it may seem. 'Of course, it doesn't exist... but I admit, it was exciting to watch. We were entertained, even if it was just AI-generated content. 'Who knows, maybe one day it could become a reality. After all, Baling and Pengkalan Hulu do have mountains and scenic views that are suitable and beautiful,' he was quoted saying. The video, which had gone viral on TikTok and Facebook, had reportedly prompted a couple to travel over 300km from Kuala Lumpur, believing the cable car was real and hoping to experience the ride. Yazlan said the incident highlighted how AI-generated media could mislead users and create unnecessary confusion, and added that he would be the first to try such an attraction if it ever became real. Acting Baling district police chief Deputy Superintendent Ahmad Salimi Md Ali also called on the public to verify online content before believing or sharing it. 'To date, we have not received any reports involving losses, fraud or public concern related to the viral AI-generated video. 'Checks conducted in both Baling and Pengkalan Hulu have confirmed that no such cable car project exists,' he reportedly said. He noted that action could be taken under existing laws if such content caused public alarm or disrupted order. The AI-generated video featured a fictitious news segment by 'TV Rakyat' showing scenes of a cable car called 'Kuak SkyRide' travelling over forests and mountains, with purported interviews with tourists. A hotel worker in Gerik, Perak, recounted on social media how she had to break the news to the couple, who were shocked to learn the attraction was fake. The woman reportedly asked why anyone would lie, citing the presence of a 'reporter' in the video, and even considered suing the fictitious journalist. The couple admitted they were too embarrassed to ask their children about the video beforehand, while the hotel worker urged others to help elderly parents verify their travel plans.

Is the Velvet Sundown an AI band? Many on the internet sure think so
Is the Velvet Sundown an AI band? Many on the internet sure think so

Fast Company

time2 days ago

  • Entertainment
  • Fast Company

Is the Velvet Sundown an AI band? Many on the internet sure think so

The Velvet Sundown is the most-talked-about band of the moment, but not for the reason you might expect. The 'indie rock band,' which has gained more than 634,000 Spotify listeners in just a few weeks, has spoken out in response to accusations that the group is AI -generated. The suspicions first surfaced on Reddit last week, where users discussed the band's sudden appearance in their Discovery Weekly playlists on Spotify. The Velvet Sundown exhibits several common indicators of AI involvement: eerie, uncanny-valley-style images, a now-deleted fabricated Billboard quote in its Spotify bio, and virtually no internet presence prior to last month. As the speculation picked up media attention, an X account claiming to represent the band responded to the rumors: 'Absolutely crazy that so-called 'journalists' keep pushing the lazy, baseless theory that The Velvet Sundown is 'AI-generated' with zero evidence.' The post went on to read: 'This is not a joke. This is our music, written in long, sweaty nights in a cramped bungalow in California with real instruments, real minds, and real soul. Every chord, every lyric, every mistake — HUMAN.' Adding to the confusion, the X account that posted the denial is not the one linked from the band's official Spotify page. In other words, multiple social media profiles appear to be representing the band, all of them claiming to be official. When Fast Company reached out to the X account that first posted last week, an apparent spokesperson for the band tried to clarify the situation. 'There are a couple Twitter accounts floating around because different members have been responding in different ways,' the spokesperson wrote in an email to Fast Company. 'We're a collective, and not everyone agrees on how to handle the attention.' They added that the ambiguity is 'part of the story' and is helping to get 'people curious about diving down the rabbit hole.' They also admitted to having used 'some AI tools in the process,' mostly for 'press visuals and experimenting with aesthetic ideas.' Still, they insisted, 'the core of this has always been about human musicianship.' According to its Spotify bio, the Velvet Sundown is a 'four-piece' consisting of 'singer and mellotron player Gabe Farrow, guitarist Lennie West, Milo Rains, who crafts the band's textured synth sounds, and free-spirited percussionist Orion 'Rio' Del Mar.' The band maintains that its two full-length albums are 'written, played, and produced by real people,' adding, 'No generative audio tools. The textures and glitches that people point to as 'proof' are just from lo-fi gear, weird mic setups, tape loops, that sort of thing.' Whether AI is involved or not, the controversy highlights the growing conversation around generative AI in the music industry. Deezer, a streaming service that flags AI-generated music, recently reported receiving more than 20,000 fully AI-created tracks per day. The Velvet Sundown, for its part, defends the artistic freedom to experiment. 'For us, this has always been about making strange, emotional music and exploring how to present it in interesting ways. It might not fit neatly into anyone's expectations, but it's honest to what we're trying to do.'

AI-generated band Velvet Sundown is a Spotify hit, but is the music any good?
AI-generated band Velvet Sundown is a Spotify hit, but is the music any good?

The National

time3 days ago

  • Entertainment
  • The National

AI-generated band Velvet Sundown is a Spotify hit, but is the music any good?

In normal times, Velvet Sundown would be a good news story. They released two full-length albums only weeks apart, amassing more than half a million monthly Spotify listeners, all while their tracks landed on popular mood-based playlists. At a time when few new rock bands are breaking through, their arrival stands out. There's only one complication – the band isn't real. At least, not in the traditional sense. There are no verified photos of all four members, no live shows, no interviews and no clear production credits. Everything, from the album art to the band bio, points to Velvet Sundown being fully AI-generated. But the point of this review isn't to play detective and spot the musical equivalent of the em dash. It's to ask, even if this music was made by machines, is it actually any good? Floating on Echoes and Dust and Silence feel less like distinct records and more like two sides of the same coin. At its algorithmic heart, Velvet Sundown is more a stylistic experiment than a creative expression. They evoke the warm, washed-out tones of 1970s Laurel Canyon folk – a hazy Americana sound informed by soft guitars, genteel percussion and warm ambience. The references are convincing. But as a listening experience, it wears thin fast. Take Dust on the Wind, currently the band's most-streamed track. It's laid-back, mellow and competently arranged. The bassline rolls along gently, the percussion shuffles lightly behind the guitars and the whole thing lands exactly where it should. While the song has a definite vibe, it's not enough if that's all there is. Drift Beyond the Flame and The Wind Still Knows Our Name follow similar patterns, and after a while, that samey-ness starts to set in. And after 20 songs of this, the question stops being about whether they are real and more about why they don't make me feel anything? Part of the answer lies in the vocals. The singer (credited as Gabe Farrow) – or rather the simulated voice – is programmed to sound like a restrained crooner, somewhere between a diet Chris Cornell and Jeff Buckley, but without the risk. Every note falls exactly where it should, like Tetris blocks. Just when a vocal line is begging to be lifted or break slightly, it stops flat as if the air's been cut. You don't hear breath intake, strain or any of the human cracks that gives a performance its vulnerability. The voice never truly soars, and maybe, for now, it can't. The music across both albums, all 26 songs in total, carries the same uniform restraint. The titles suggest emotional weight – End the Pain, Smoke and Silence and Drift Beyond the Flame – but the lyrics rarely move beyond generalities. While criticising an album for vague writing can feel like low-hanging fruit, it's harder to ignore when the genres referenced are built on a tradition of evocative lyrics that are often direct, searing or emotionally grounded. End the Pain promises catharsis but never builds towards anything. Smoke and Silence is filled with empty slogans (raise your voice, break the chain / Sing for peace, end the pain) and Dust on the Wind, with its soft tone and strongest melody, drifts through pastoral scenes without direction. Even in folk or Americana, genres often known for their ambience and intimacy, there's usually a sense of movement, of intriguing emotional drift. Think of Neil Young's 1970 album After the Gold Rush, a genre cornerstone whose songs sway between togetherness and dissonance. It features tracks such as Southern Man that bristle with urgency, and Don't Let It Bring You Down, which drifts between melancholy and resolve. Or take Joni Mitchell's 1971 album Blue, where A Case of You feels fragile and raw, like it could unravel at any moment. These songs and albums sound intimate, but never inherently inert. With Velvet Sundown, everything sounds nice, but nothing surprises. And for music made by a system designed to predict, maybe that's the only extent it can currently produce. This is what makes the band's creator or creators - they haven't been revealed - choice of genre strange. You'd think AI's full-throttled invasion into popular music would begin on more familiar terrain such as electronic dance music or hip-hop – music built on software, loops and programmed rhythm. But instead, Velvet Sundown is making guitar-based music and those limits are clear. Rock, folk, Americana – are genres that rely on, or even revel in, human traits – timing that's slightly off, choruses that perhaps run too long and vocals that crack. They're messy in nature. For all the cliches about four chords and a chorus, guitar music works because it's imperfect. AI can sketch the outline, but it can't inject the feeling or attitude that pushes a song somewhere unexpected. Which brings us to the broader problem, not with Velvet Sundown, but with the ecosystem they're presently thriving in. Their success is less about the quality of AI replication and more about how streaming has reshaped what listeners value in music. Playlists used to be about exploration and discovery, and now they are seemingly about consistency. Mood-based curation, such as the unofficial Spotify playlist Good Mornings – Happily Positive Music to the Start the Day featuring Velvet Sundown, has flattened the sonic landscape to the point where a fake song can sit comfortably between works by real, era-defining artists such as The Beatles and Billie Eilish. The result is a listening culture increasingly valuing indistinction. Music becomes background and texture, not narrative or expression. The reported calls by artists and industry to flag or ban AI bands such as Velvet Sundown – who are, unsurprisingly, back with another album next week – are understandable. But that's not the only answer. We don't need fewer AI bands, we just need more human ones. Artists that can create music that is, perhaps, as focused as Velvet Sundown but with the kind of idiosyncratic touches and emotional expression that only humans can conjure. It's those qualities, more than anything, that have a chance of breaking the algorithm.

Meet Velvet Sundown, Spotify's hottest new band. But are they real?
Meet Velvet Sundown, Spotify's hottest new band. But are they real?

Times

time3 days ago

  • Entertainment
  • Times

Meet Velvet Sundown, Spotify's hottest new band. But are they real?

Their soft-rock songs have racked up more than 550,000 listeners on Spotify in a matter of weeks, but are the Velvet Sundown real or an AI-generated band? The group have all the hallmarks of AI, from their lifeless photographs to the lack of evidence the musicians exist or have ever played live. But just as their apparently hoodwinked 'fans' and the industry had concluded that this was another case of AI killing off real stars, the Velvet Sundown popped up to defend themselves. 'Absolutely crazy that so-called 'journalists' keep pushing the lazy, baseless theory that The Velvet Sundown is 'AI-generated' with zero evidence,' they wrote on X to their rather underwhelming audience of 92 followers. Please enable cookies and other technologies to view this content. You can update your cookies preferences any time using privacy manager. 'This is not a joke. This is our music, written in long, sweaty nights in a cramped bungalow in California with real instruments, real minds, and real soul. Every chord, every lyric, every mistake — HUMAN.'Just because we don't do TikTok dances or livestream our process doesn't mean we're fake … We are REAL!' Adding to the mystery is that this X account is not the one linked to from their Spotify profile. Whoever is making the pleas, they have fallen on deaf ears. Deezer, the streaming service that flags AI music on its platform, said on a label: 'Some tracks on this album may have been created using artificial intelligence'. However, Spotify does not have a policy of labelling AI music and some fans felt misled by the platform's 'verified artist' label attached to the Velvet Sundown, which only means that it is the artist's stream. Daniel Ek, Spotify's co-founder and chief executive, has been generally positive about the potential of AI's impact on music. He said in May: 'I'm mostly optimistic and mostly very excited because we're just in the beginning of understanding this future of creativity that we're entering. • Alexa's AI song generator angers music industry 'We want real humans to make it as artists and creators, but what is creativity in the future with AI? I don't know. What is music?' However, while some artists such as the producer Timbaland and Ryan Tedder, a songwriter for Adele and Taylor Swift, are embracing it, the technology represents a threat to different parts of the industry. • Jimmy Page: AI is putting the magic of human artistry at stake The new AI music-making platforms such as Suno and Udio are being sued by the record companies for breach of copyright. Fraudsters are also uploading AI tracks and getting bots to listen to them to generate revenue. Deezer said that 18 per cent of all music uploaded to the platform daily — more than 20,000 tracks — were 100 per cent AI-generated. Of these, 70 per cent were fraudulent, which risks crowding out genuine artists. Spotify has a policy of not manually recommending AI tracks on playlists and will ban AI songs that impersonate real artists. However, the Velvet Sundown's success appears to have stemmed from the fact that Spotify has been putting the band's songs on the popular Discover Weekly playlist, which is algorithmically created. The Velvet Sundown are not the only AI success story on Spotify. Music Business Worldwide this week identified 13 AI-made 'artists' on the platform with 4.1 million monthly listeners between them. They include a country artist called Aventhis (a million listeners), a group called the Devil Inside (700,000 listeners) and a Marvin Gaye-inspired Nick Hustles (200,000 listeners). • Will AI give us new McCartney and Dylan albums in 2060? The musician and author Chris Dalla Riva said on TikTok: 'Since it's so easy to generate music this way, you could flood services with this music and completely crowd out people who are trying to make a career as an artist, trying to make legitimate art. If you are just writing a prompt and generating hundreds of songs at scale, it's very clear that this is just a way for you to try to make money.'

Poll: Do you like AI music?
Poll: Do you like AI music?

Android Authority

time3 days ago

  • Entertainment
  • Android Authority

Poll: Do you like AI music?

Like a modern version of the tree-falling-in-the-woods conundrum, AI is giving us new philosophical questions. For example, if AI music sounds genuine, is it okay to enjoy it? This debate has gained momentum recently, as a new band called The Velvet Sundown just reached over 500,000 listens on Spotify. The problem is that they don't actually exist. Everything about them — from their echoey, classic rock-inspired tracks to their Instagram pictures — appears to be AI-generated. I've been listening to the songs and can see why opinions are divided. The sound is melodic and slick, if a bit bland and samey. As background music, it's not offensive, and I'd argue I've heard plenty of worse tunes from human artists. Honestly, if one of these songs came up in a mix, I doubt I'd have immediately realized it was machine-made. Do you like AI music? 0 votes Yes, some of it is good NaN % Not so far, but I'm open to it NaN % No, I find it soulless NaN % I haven't heard any yet NaN % To be clear, none of this means it's okay. There are obvious implications for artists and the music industry, and it feels unsettling that this 'band' is being presented as real online. But setting that aside for a moment, we're curious about your honest reaction to AI-generated music, because The Velvet Sundown is far from the only example in this new era. We've already seen similar debates play out in visual art and writing, but music feels even more personal. When you listen to a track you love, you're connecting with what you assume is someone's lived experience or emotion. You know the artist had a flash of inspiration, then worked hard to bring the work to life. That connection might feel hollow if you discover it was generated by a bot trained on a dataset of existing songs. Would that affect your ability to enjoy it? Let us know if you actually like AI music in the poll above, and feel free to share your thoughts in the comments section below.

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