Spotify AI Band: Viral Response

A band accused of being AI-generated has issued a statement on X, hitting back at the viral claims.

In June 2025, Spotify listeners began coming across a band by the name of The Velvet Sundown as the app provided one of their songs in a playlist.

They’ve amassed over 634,000 monthly listeners thanks to the playlist inclusion, but rumors of the band being completely AI-generated quickly made the rounds around social media. The claims are based on the fact that the band’s members, Gabe Farrow, Lennie West, Milo Raines, and Orion Del Mar, don’t appear to exist despite attempts to find them, and the photos they’ve uploaded on Instagram have been labeled as AI generated.

According to TechRadar, streaming platform Deezer says they’ve flagged the band’s music as 100% AI-generated, but Spotify and Apple Music have yet to address the claims.

The band themselves have issued a statement on X arguing against the claims that they’re fake, claiming everything was written during “long sweaty nights” in a cramped bungalow in California.

The Velvet Sundown responds to AI claims

“Absolutely crazy that so-called ‘journalists’ keep pushing the lazy, baseless theory that The Velvet Sundown is ‘AI-generated’ with zero evidence,” they said in a post. “Not a single one of these ‘writers’ has reached out, visited a show, or listened beyond the Spotify algorithm.”

“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.”

They went on to call the AI claims “insulting” and that they had to “lock down our personal accounts.”

“Just because we don’t do TikTok dances or livestream our process doesn’t mean we’re fake,” they said. “The fact that some blog editors would rather pretend we’re a bunch of machines than admit an unknown band is out here grinding & making something people enjoy is insulting.

“We’ve had to lock down our personal accounts due to harassment, all because some writer wanted clicks & couldn’t imagine people like us existing outside their sanitized indie media echo chamber.”

The Velvet Sundown isn’t the first bit of AI-generated media to go viral on social media either. On June 20, a Titanic escape simulator game was uploaded to Steam with questionable images.