A Canadian's AI hoax duped the media and propelled a 'band' to success(cbc.ca)
cbc.ca
A Canadian's AI hoax duped the media and propelled a 'band' to success
https://www.cbc.ca/news/entertainment/ai-band-hoax-velvet-sundown-1.7575874
42 comments
How was there any doubt this band was AI? Anyone who's heard the output of Suno can identify the strangled AI-generated vocals in an instant.
The article touches on that - if you’re not familiar with Suno, you still will be familiar with autotuned vocals, so if you hear some Suno-generated stuff, it’s not going to seem unreasonable that it could just be some other digitally-tuned thing.
Rick Beato mostly concluded "AI", and his methodology is instructive => https://youtu.be/3Nlb-m_vKYM?si=RmeZ3jM8KDJmFoUq
I fell down the AI music rabbithole several months ago, not realising that I was listening to AI, and when I found out, I was impressed. There's definitely a lot of unconscious bias in subjective matters, such that explicitly marketing your music as AI-generated is unlikely to gain much support.
Here is his medium post on the matter: https://medium.com/@andrew.frelon/i-am-andrew-frelon-the-guy...
This YouTube channel was adding millions more subscribers than MrBeast last month and was the highest gaining channel on the platform. It is just hundreds of AI-generated songs:
https://www.youtube.com/@MastersOfProphecy
I don't like any of the music, but I did stumble across an AI song I actually thought was pretty good the other day.
We shouldn't be worried about the ones that are obviously AI. We should be worried about the ones which are stealth and under-the-radar. This time next year I would imagine AI will have a #1 track somewhere in the world.
https://www.youtube.com/@MastersOfProphecy
I don't like any of the music, but I did stumble across an AI song I actually thought was pretty good the other day.
We shouldn't be worried about the ones that are obviously AI. We should be worried about the ones which are stealth and under-the-radar. This time next year I would imagine AI will have a #1 track somewhere in the world.
> This time next year I would imagine AI will have a #1 track somewhere in the world.
That song may have already been generated/written.
https://restofworld.org/2024/ai-song-flowgpt-bad-bunny/
Previously (no discussion at the time, but if you're here now, go ahead below):
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40956553
That song may have already been generated/written.
https://restofworld.org/2024/ai-song-flowgpt-bad-bunny/
Previously (no discussion at the time, but if you're here now, go ahead below):
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40956553
Nobody seems to be complaining that it's bad music. What's the problem?
It is bad though. The tone is really similar on all the tracks, the solos are closer to guitar noodling, the structure is extremely predictable, etc. Ok, maybe not strictly bad - but definitely not good. Like, I'm not good and I feel like I could write a lot of similar stuff given enough effort and trying to sample bits of Led Zeppelin, Omega and others.
If you're knowledgeable enough in music theory most songs are predictable.
There's "understood within the commonly used systems" predictable and there's "boring simple and repetitive" predictable. This band is both.
A lot of popular music is boring simple and repetitive, though.
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So I copy someone's music, publish it under my name, and then say "Nobody seems to be complaining that it's bad music. What's the problem?"
First, people listen to absolute garbage. General taste is not a standard. Second, the quality of the music doesn't make other problems magically disappear. This music is built on enormous amounts of other people's music, and at the same time threatens to almost completely undermine music making, from amateur to megastar. That's a problem.
First, people listen to absolute garbage. General taste is not a standard. Second, the quality of the music doesn't make other problems magically disappear. This music is built on enormous amounts of other people's music, and at the same time threatens to almost completely undermine music making, from amateur to megastar. That's a problem.
We’ve had engineered hits from committees dominating pop music for decades now. This doesn’t seem any less authentic, and apparently people like it.
Really, what’s the difference between this and virtual bands like Gorillaz?
Really, what’s the difference between this and virtual bands like Gorillaz?
Have you actually listened to this band and to Gorillaz? There's really no comparison: velvet sundown is just boring - there's nothing there, there. There's no interesting motifs or story telling, no memorable riffs or solos, no surprising structure.
> and apparently people like it.
That remains to be seen. The early plays were bought to get the recommendations. (Tens of thousands of plays, but all within ~100 of each other for the less popular tracks) We really don't know how many people listened to this yet.
> and apparently people like it.
That remains to be seen. The early plays were bought to get the recommendations. (Tens of thousands of plays, but all within ~100 of each other for the less popular tracks) We really don't know how many people listened to this yet.
> Have you actually listened to this band and to Gorillaz? There's really no comparison
The comparison is that they are both fictional bands. The received popularity of the music is irrelevant.
Did you not understand the point of the GP?
The comparison is that they are both fictional bands. The received popularity of the music is irrelevant.
Did you not understand the point of the GP?
Gorillaz is not a fictional band. Having cartoon characters doesn't make it fictional. We know who their creators are. Neither does Daft Punk become fictional when they put on the helmets.
(No, I didn't get what comparison was being made. It's so different I didn't realise anyone would do that)
(No, I didn't get what comparison was being made. It's so different I didn't realise anyone would do that)
What you consider fictional and anyone else considers fictional doesn't have to align. The point was clear, when interpreted in good faith. I understand you disagree, but that doesn't change what I think about the nature of persona.
The Gorillaz are actually real people though? You do realize The Archies didn't write "Sugar, Sugar"?
Gorillaz (and e.g. vtubers) are effectively real people performing in digitally generated costumes. Especially Gorillaz, where it's not a secret who's behind it. This is closer to e.g. lip-syncing or vocaloids, though even they have more human input in the original composition.
Whether music is good or bad is highly subjective. There is a high chance that I would find music you like to be crap and vise versa.
So true.
When does music stop being "real"? If I use a vocoder? If I have a producer cleaning up the track? If I sing but somebody else produced the beat in Logic with digital instruments?
Lots of artists seem mad, but they're already using plenty of tooling. I see this as a natural evolution, and the outcome akin to the industrial revolution.
Lots of artists seem mad, but they're already using plenty of tooling. I see this as a natural evolution, and the outcome akin to the industrial revolution.
“AI or not” is going to be the norm going forward. It already is in many areas and services.
Sad state of affairs for creatives and non-creatives alike.
Sad state of affairs for creatives and non-creatives alike.
> “AI or not” is going to be the norm going forward
The new "is it Photoshop?"
It'll be so pervasive that the average Instagram user will become fluent.
People are going to get so used to this technology. It's going to be added to everything.
> Sad state of affairs for creatives and non-creatives alike.
Heavy disagree. I absolutely love AI generated content, and my friends and I have been using the tools quite a bit:
https://youtu.be/Tii9uF0nAx4
https://youtu.be/tAAiiKteM-U
https://youtu.be/H4NFXGMuwpY
Other people are making really cool stuff, too.
Hollywood never catered to what I wanted. We lived in a drought where 20,000 yearly film students had to fight for 100 roles of autonomy (most often won by nepotism). I certainly never made it, despite trying. Now I can make the stuff I want to see for myself.
The new "is it Photoshop?"
It'll be so pervasive that the average Instagram user will become fluent.
People are going to get so used to this technology. It's going to be added to everything.
> Sad state of affairs for creatives and non-creatives alike.
Heavy disagree. I absolutely love AI generated content, and my friends and I have been using the tools quite a bit:
https://youtu.be/Tii9uF0nAx4
https://youtu.be/tAAiiKteM-U
https://youtu.be/H4NFXGMuwpY
Other people are making really cool stuff, too.
Hollywood never catered to what I wanted. We lived in a drought where 20,000 yearly film students had to fight for 100 roles of autonomy (most often won by nepotism). I certainly never made it, despite trying. Now I can make the stuff I want to see for myself.
It seems, though I have no way of knowing, that these clips were conceived by a human and realized using AI tools.
How would you feel if these were presented amongst a sea of other clips that were prompted by "create a short video that captures the attention of a 25-30yo male", presumably in the hope of syphoning a few cents from Instagram?
I recently bought a book to read on a flight, and it was the first time it occured to me there was no way to verify the thing was written by a human other than to check that it was published before ~2023. Part of what I, at least, feel when reading a book is a connection to another human and our shared experience that lead them to tell their story. For me this experience is steeply cheapened by the thought that that connection might not be with a human.
I feel similarly about the Ghibli style transfer craze. AI generated images may be "cool", but you no longer know if you're connecting to an artist. At least in the case of Ghibli, their work is well known so it's possible to tell. Where's the room for human creatives to create new original art styles? The rightful default assumption is that anything post 2023 came out of a model as some mash-up of inputs stolen from anonymous no-names.
FWIW, this is coming from a non-creative atheist who has long belived humans are nothing more than probabilistic biological machines.
How would you feel if these were presented amongst a sea of other clips that were prompted by "create a short video that captures the attention of a 25-30yo male", presumably in the hope of syphoning a few cents from Instagram?
I recently bought a book to read on a flight, and it was the first time it occured to me there was no way to verify the thing was written by a human other than to check that it was published before ~2023. Part of what I, at least, feel when reading a book is a connection to another human and our shared experience that lead them to tell their story. For me this experience is steeply cheapened by the thought that that connection might not be with a human.
I feel similarly about the Ghibli style transfer craze. AI generated images may be "cool", but you no longer know if you're connecting to an artist. At least in the case of Ghibli, their work is well known so it's possible to tell. Where's the room for human creatives to create new original art styles? The rightful default assumption is that anything post 2023 came out of a model as some mash-up of inputs stolen from anonymous no-names.
FWIW, this is coming from a non-creative atheist who has long belived humans are nothing more than probabilistic biological machines.
Keep in mind that even with AI-generated content, a human ultimately came up with the idea and told the AI to do it.
But what is this idea the human is realizing? With most tools, it's an indescribable essence of a work that, even if you could extract it from the author's mind at that point, would be different from the end result—not because it's divorced from its platonic form, but because the labor itself develops it.
These generators are creative Speakwrites that strip that element of thought, only padding out a short core description with cliché. The resulting work doesn't have any layers of subtext or intentionality; it can be fully summarized by its prompt.
These generators are creative Speakwrites that strip that element of thought, only padding out a short core description with cliché. The resulting work doesn't have any layers of subtext or intentionality; it can be fully summarized by its prompt.
And the thousands of other unpaid humans who came up with the ideas and creative content in the training data.
I think it's cool if you're making something for yourself.
Not cool if you're a media corporation generating something, slapping DRM on it, and trying to pass it off as the work of real human artists so that they don't have to pay real human artists.
Not cool if you're a media corporation generating something, slapping DRM on it, and trying to pass it off as the work of real human artists so that they don't have to pay real human artists.
You don’t have to buy products that aren’t certified-AI-free. You’re not obligated to buy many things, though existing without expenditure is more of a life goal and less of a realistic expectation.
I would never knowingly pay money for any "work of art" created by AI.
Let's see how this claim fares in 10 years.
That is a perfectly reasonable position to hold.
Would you feel defrauded to find out that you had knowingly paid money for a “work of art” created by AI, if you have previously found it to your satisfaction?
I tend to not care too much myself. I trust my own sense of taste. If I enjoy content, I probably won’t care if AI made it, though I’ll admit a pro-human bias, because humans are capable of suffering and lack. Part of being pro-human for me is being fine with others using tools and techniques to reduce effort and especially drudgery.
I still use spellcheck. I don’t use dictation tools or read aloud tools, but I am human and I struggle like anyone else to exert myself. I just don’t require assistance to do those things right now, but I know that may change at a moment’s notice. Though I don’t “need” assistive technology or devices presently, I still enjoy and prefer subtitles even now.
If you need to use tools to consume or produce, I won’t look down on you. Just be honest about it. If you used AI to make something, just say so. It’s not a personal failing to use AI tools, but it is a failing to use them and then lie about it.
Photojournalists know what I mean, as they can do in-camera techniques as long as it isn’t misrepresenting how a scene appears to a person basically, whereas most post-processing techniques are not really considered in comporting with professional ethics because representation of reality is the aim and goal, not making aesthetic decisions or staging photos as if they are naturalistic, but documenting actual events that transpired independently of the people capturing the events on camera.
But there’s a point where what we have doesn’t have enough cooks in the kitchen, as silly as that sounds. AI generated subtitles are often wrong, and there’s no way as a human who is reading them to suggest corrections on most platforms. Now we have AI automated dubbing, which I have only used a few times. It seems mostly fine, but I don’t think failures are as obvious in that case if I don’t speak the source language, so I guess I’m mostly speaking of closed captions or subtitles in languages I speak, since other errors I wouldn’t notice to begin with, such as errors in translation.
How much art isn’t being made til now, not for lack of will, drive, desire, or grit, but inability to develop skills and taste because they don’t have arms, literally or metaphorically. Isn’t it a bit like gatekeeping art to say that art made by AI isn’t a true work of art? AI tools aren’t self-directed or self-aware. There is a human involved somewhere, and they are a patron of the arts at the very least, if not an editor. I view the human in the loop as legitimate an artist as Andy Warhol at his height of production capacity. He didn’t even make art. He made decisions about what art is once he saw it in the world. His art was recontextualization. AI is just going through the looking glass.
So it goes. Same as it ever was? Wasn’t it ever thus? Art is for us by us, but that’s not a given. I didn’t make the flower I admire, either, nor the apple of my eye.
Don’t let anything steal your joy, even you and your own preconceived notions of what joy ought be caused by, or you’re just raining on your own parade and those of others, or becoming an old person shaking their fist at a cloud. We’re making rainbows if you’d just wait.
Would you feel defrauded to find out that you had knowingly paid money for a “work of art” created by AI, if you have previously found it to your satisfaction?
I tend to not care too much myself. I trust my own sense of taste. If I enjoy content, I probably won’t care if AI made it, though I’ll admit a pro-human bias, because humans are capable of suffering and lack. Part of being pro-human for me is being fine with others using tools and techniques to reduce effort and especially drudgery.
I still use spellcheck. I don’t use dictation tools or read aloud tools, but I am human and I struggle like anyone else to exert myself. I just don’t require assistance to do those things right now, but I know that may change at a moment’s notice. Though I don’t “need” assistive technology or devices presently, I still enjoy and prefer subtitles even now.
If you need to use tools to consume or produce, I won’t look down on you. Just be honest about it. If you used AI to make something, just say so. It’s not a personal failing to use AI tools, but it is a failing to use them and then lie about it.
Photojournalists know what I mean, as they can do in-camera techniques as long as it isn’t misrepresenting how a scene appears to a person basically, whereas most post-processing techniques are not really considered in comporting with professional ethics because representation of reality is the aim and goal, not making aesthetic decisions or staging photos as if they are naturalistic, but documenting actual events that transpired independently of the people capturing the events on camera.
But there’s a point where what we have doesn’t have enough cooks in the kitchen, as silly as that sounds. AI generated subtitles are often wrong, and there’s no way as a human who is reading them to suggest corrections on most platforms. Now we have AI automated dubbing, which I have only used a few times. It seems mostly fine, but I don’t think failures are as obvious in that case if I don’t speak the source language, so I guess I’m mostly speaking of closed captions or subtitles in languages I speak, since other errors I wouldn’t notice to begin with, such as errors in translation.
How much art isn’t being made til now, not for lack of will, drive, desire, or grit, but inability to develop skills and taste because they don’t have arms, literally or metaphorically. Isn’t it a bit like gatekeeping art to say that art made by AI isn’t a true work of art? AI tools aren’t self-directed or self-aware. There is a human involved somewhere, and they are a patron of the arts at the very least, if not an editor. I view the human in the loop as legitimate an artist as Andy Warhol at his height of production capacity. He didn’t even make art. He made decisions about what art is once he saw it in the world. His art was recontextualization. AI is just going through the looking glass.
So it goes. Same as it ever was? Wasn’t it ever thus? Art is for us by us, but that’s not a given. I didn’t make the flower I admire, either, nor the apple of my eye.
Don’t let anything steal your joy, even you and your own preconceived notions of what joy ought be caused by, or you’re just raining on your own parade and those of others, or becoming an old person shaking their fist at a cloud. We’re making rainbows if you’d just wait.
Lots of jobs in the past have been obviated away from technological advances, there is no difference in this current generation of jobs either. No one still thinks of the farrier when talking about cars (and even then, farriers still exist).
Considering the discussion, IMO that one feels more relevant:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tj-dJvGVb-w
(i loved those videos btw)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tj-dJvGVb-w
(i loved those videos btw)
Those pics are actually pretty good AI fakes. All of the "band members" have 5 well-proportioned fingers and two eyes. Getting these details wrong, obvious to any human, is what often gives away AI generated images.
For those who don't know, "frelon" is French for hornet.
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Unless I’m reading this wrong, I assume many of those streams were from people seeing the mystery on social media and checking out the songs. The article tries to imply it was all organic success from people who liked it, but it’s clear that the mystery of the AI generated music was part of the social media explosion that propelled the listens.