Panic World - You might be listening to AI music

Episode Date: September 10, 2025

The band The Velvet Sundown broke through the music charts with millions of streams in months after coming from nowhere — and being an entirely AI band. Is it an existential threat to the health of the music industry and the internet when you can’t even tell if the “song of the summer” was sung by an actual human, or a robot? Music critic Anthony Fantano joins us to discuss. Anthony Fantano runs The Needle Drop, where he reviews albums and comments on the music industry. You can check him out there or follow him on Instagram @afantano. EXCLUSIVE NordVPN Deal ➼ https://nordvpn.com/panicworld Try it risk-free now with a 30-day money-back guarantee! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Who's your favorite AI artist right now? Like who are you listening to when it comes to AI music? I think my favorite AI artist right now is a guy by the name of MGK. I don't know if you guys have heard of him. He's making some really good pop music as of late. He's got this out and Lost Americana on the way. Sure, yeah. It's just really groundbreaking for AI art.

I've never heard an AI artist sound so real, so human, so authentic. When I was listening to tickets to my downfall deep in my COVID mania, I thought, you know, what would make this better if he danced? So the reason I bring up your favorite AI music, of course, is because today we're talking about the proliferation of AI music. Right now on Spotify and other platforms, there's all kinds of music made with AI. It's getting like millions and millions of listeners a month. And most recently, we've had this band The Velvet Sundown that has broken out and gone very

viral for being made of, you know, because of AI and how it was involved. We're going to try to figure out if we should care about any of this. Is it an existential risk to the health of the music industry and the internet? I'm Ryan Broderick. This is Panic World. Joining me sometimes is our producer Grant Irving. This is a show about how the internet warps our minds, our culture and eventually reality. And joining me today is the internet's favorite music nerd.

Ante Fantana, welcome to the show. How are you? How are you? I'm good. I'm hot, but I'm doing all right. I got an air conditioner point right at my face. So when did you first? So when did you first hear about the Velvet Sundown?

When did they come across your radar? I think before a lot of the major articles came out, there were a lot of fans of mine and my DMs kind of like, you know, tipping me off, you know, to the whole thing. I don't know where like inklings or information started to leak about the band first, but like I was getting sort of like, you know, information about them or sort of people running across them and just voicing concern about them like, you know,

as soon as there was like any kind of, you know, discussion about them. I think maybe around when they were just getting about maybe 100,000 or like a few hundred thousand monthly listeners. And it's funny, just all the fervor and discourse around them. I remember, like, with each new article that would pass every day, it'd be like, uh, AI band manages to get a couple hundred thousand listeners. AI band has half a million monthly listeners. AI band has like 600,000 monthly listeners.

Like, you guys are making it worse. Did you clock that they were AI when you first heard them? I mean, you don't even need to hear their music, like literally all the band photos look AI. Right. So there are a ton of lawsuits right now that could change the way generative AI works legally. But right now, there is only one legal ruling from the U.S. Copyright Office. which basically says that to copyright or trademark anything involving AI, you have to prove that it was sufficiently altered by a human being. So before we launch into sort of how we got to something like The Velvet Sun on happening, I wanted to ask you your thoughts about AI music and how it fits into sort of the history of music and technology.

Because it's something that I've sort of struggled with myself trying to figure out, okay, is AI music just a, souped up version of the same debates we used to have around sampling. Is it something wholly different? Where do you kind of fall on? And there's also, of course, like a couple different ways that AI can be incorporated into the music production process. So like I what's your sort of general take on it? Are you totally anti? Are you sort of wait and see? How do you feel about it? Problem I primarily have with the generative stuff doesn't even kind of really come down to I think like the process of it or whether I, or not it's like, you know, ruining creativity or anything like that. I mean, I think there's like

an argument to be made there with those things. My issue primarily, though, currently right now, there's like no set standards or expectations in terms of like training these AI models on certain artist's music. Right. It's essentially like sampling with extra step. You're sort of giving it a series of sounds and ideas. Maybe it's even breaking it down to the bare bones beats and melodies that are working into these songs. And you're sort of like trying to teach it these ideas, but I mean, those ideas are based off of the original copyrighted works of other artists and rights holders and so on and so forth. We've seen numerous examples of AI generated tracks turning up out of nowhere that have a vocal on it that sounds exactly like future

or exactly like Young Lean or exactly like Ariana Grande because it's, literally taking those sounds and just kind of like finding ways to copy them over onto different melodies or other sort of like musical ideas. I feel like there should be some kind of like credit ode to the artists whose music and original works are being, you know, used to train these AI models. But again, as of right now, there's like no real expectation with any of that stuff. I'm going to continue to sort of like be against, you know, these sorts of models and usages of AI for. as long as artists aren't like, you know, being compensated fairly for the way that their music is being incorporated into it. Yeah, it definitely is exploiting artists. Or at the very least, it's ripping away any of the human creativity that they're providing.

It's a, it's a shuffle button for a bunch of different musical ideas. And, you know, I don't want to sound too corny, but there's not really a lot of soul in that. Like, it is, by definition, extremely. you know, unhuman, very synthetic and not in ways that are particularly interesting, you know, the way like a synthesizer might be synthetic. I mean, I have reviewed and I've had positive things to say about records, for example, from artists like way before this was even a discussion topic in a broad sense, who have used AI in their music, but what they did was they trained it or incorporated elements or recordings of music that they themselves made, you know, or had some

kind of like controller ownership of. Like, if you want to train A, or feed some kind of AI model music that you made, you know, and that you own or you have some kind of like control over and that's your thing. I mean, I guess go for it. You know, if you feel like that helps your process and gets you to where you want to go creatively, I think that's cool. Mostly what I see AI getting used for now, you know, is a way to sort of like launder stealing launder sort of like this false creativity. Well, I think it's good that you sort of pointed out like the differences in AI here. So when we're talk, we're going to be specifically talking about generative AI, which is a type of artificial intelligence. that, you know, can generate content. To start here, our story, the first kind of musical AI generation platform was Suno in May 2020. They seem like the biggest one. And when they launch, it only takes a few months for users to start messing around with it. And that brings us to like the next big milestone when we're talking about AI music,

which is, do you know glorb? Have you heard of glorb? I've not heard of glorb. Okay. So glorb is a YouTube channel, Glorb, the board. bottom two. It's uploaded on YouTube and it's an AI sponge you've probably actually seen it's it's AI SpongeBob and he's shooting guns and he's like driving around the car I know I've I've seen like the AI SpongeBob like rap videos and stuff like that exactly exactly yeah and I remember when

I first saw it kind of I try to look out for things that feel new and I feel like with AI that's like especially important because AI can't make anything new like humans have to do that part And so I remember thinking like, huh, this is this is like a new thing, I think. Although like I think you could argue that like a human being did most of the interesting stuff with like the AI SpongeBob videos. Like the AI didn't make the videos. It made the music. It made it. I mean, to the degree that it made the music, I'm not entirely sure.

I mean, what seems apparent though, you need a human there singing or rapping or saying the words. And it's the AI that's sort of like, you. you know, changing the voice to sound like whatever it's trying to like impersonate it as. I mean, it's essentially kind of like a deep fake thing, you know, which I mean, like I have. Yeah. I have issues with that insofar as is it is it or is it not being used deceptively? If it's being used in a way that's sort of like in the spirit of parody and people know that you're just like kind of taking the piss and that it's not like that deep and it's that serious.

And like, you know, you're making a, I don't know, Peter from family guy having a conversation with Stewie about, you know, like the emotional hardcore or like. Emote the word emo, culture's history is so confusing. Yeah. Emotional hardcore, like, you know, what Marx would have thought about Lubbubo or something like that, you know, if like, you know, if that's how you're using it, I feel like that's more or less fine. You know, there's legal precedent defending, you know, the existence of parody.

Well, I'm glad you brought up parody. You did the thing I love when our guests do, which is you did the transition here for me. So the, the next sort of big moment in AI music is, you know, May 24 when the obscurest vinyl Facebook page launches and they're basically doing like Photoshop's of fake albums and then they start making AI versions of the fake songs from those fake albums. And are you do you do you know about this page at all? So like it's like a Facebook page.

So it was like it was sort of like an AI souped up version of like. Oh, wait. I think I remember what you're, you're talking about. Like I've seen a. odd. Some of the ridiculous songs that they've made have gone viral. Like some songs about like balls and you know, whatever. Like I'm trying to remember what the hell it was. But like I think I know exactly what you're talking about.

Like the songs sound like they're from the 50s and the 60s. And like they have like kind of an old school girl group kind of like appeal to them. Exactly. And they've got titles like, I glued my balls to my butthole again. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I got my balls to my butt hole. And they have hundreds of thousands of years. views. They've got millions of listens on Spotify. And I think that's where the, the BBL

Drizzi sort of like. That's exactly where we're headed. You know, similar vibes. You know, the BBL Drizzi kind of like came out of the same process that ended up getting sampled into that beat. Yeah. So this is exactly where we're headed. So, of course, your your good friend, Drake then releases Taylor Made Freestyle in April 2024. This starts the Kendrick Drake beef. And by May, 2024 Metro Boomin releases BBL Drizzi, which features an AI sample. What is your take on the AI dimension of BBL Drizzy? Again, it was sort of like done and released in the spirit of like parody and comedy. And it's just like kind of the silly, ha ha, we're not taking that seriously kind of thing.

But in the wake of that, you know, you've had artists like JPEG Mafia and even Lul Wayne on his latest record like drop serious like, like, This is supposed to be some of my best work to date, you know, type rap songs that feature prominent AI generated samples of either songs or music that sounds like it's from that era or it's like kind of trying to capture that same sort of energy in a certain kind of way. I mean, I don't know if you guys heard the new Lil Wayne album, but there's like a whole opening track that features like these sort of like harmonious like group choral almost like, you know, soul group type vocals. And they're singing about, you know, Lil Wayne and Mr. Carter and so on and so forth and doing so in a way to where it's like, okay, so this is literally about you. Like this is very specific. Like this sounds like a sample of a soul song from like the 60s or some bygone era. But it can't possibly be that because it feels anachronistic due to the fact that the lyrics are literally fucking about you. You know, it's like this weird anachronism thing, just like the BBL thing, because obviously there'd be no reason for there to be a soul song from that time period.

singing about Drake's BBL, you know. Do you feel like there's some historical precedent there? I feel like hip hop is genuinely considered an early adopter to technological trends with music. Like they were very early with a lot of this stuff. And so I think it's fascinating that it's happening again. Like rappers are like, yeah, I'm just going to generate a sample and I'll fuck around with it. And that's what it's going to be. And electronic music too, but especially hip hop has this knack for just kind of like taking whatever is out there in the cultural

zeitgeist or the cultural ether and just like finding a way to flip it and incorporate it into what you do so that it becomes like a part of your work because I mean with a lot of rap music I mean currency is usually pretty important you know making sure that the listener feels like that you know when they're hearing your track it's a representation of the here and the now and like the exact kind of like current paradigm that current not currency monetarily like currency in terms of like right now, you know? Yeah, yeah. In terms of like, you know, acknowledging the listeners like paradigm that they're in like right now,

the moment that they're living and breathing at that moment that they're listening to your song. When the B.B.L. Drizy song dropped. I started to try to mess around with different AI music platforms because I wanted to try to figure out like, like which one made it. Because not only is it hard to figure out like where the information that creates the AI is coming from because they're all in this black box, but also it's hard to hard to figure out like how you even did it right so i i played around with udo and suno and i asked them to make a two thousand's emo song written from the perspective of elam musk uh getting dumped by grimes which uh was interesting uh one of them changed grimes in the song uh songs lyrics to weird elf wife which i thought was like

pretty pretty smart um pretty well done that sounds like you telling it grimes and then going out and searching and finding maybe like one of the first things that somebody had written about her. Yeah, I knew that she's an elf. It's like, who's this, who's this woman? Is she a weird elf wife or something? That sounds like something an Elon Musk fan would say, right, when they see them out together. Like, who is this weird elf wife he's with? We eventually learn that Udio is the platform that creates the BBL Jersey sample. It was generated by a comedian named King Willi Onus and the lyrics were not AI generated.

So this was the last big AI-Muble. moment before Velvet Sundown. But before we totally move away from this, it's been kind of forgotten. I forgot it actually until we started recording this that Drake was using an AI gimmick as part of his beef with like Kendrick Lamar. Can you can you sort of break down the differences between how Drake used an AI version of Tupac on one of his songs versus how Kendrick and Metro Boomer, his producer, sampled BBL Drizzy. Because I actually think, within that dynamic is for me the clearest depiction of what any kind of future AI might have in music or creativity. I think that's sort of the dynamic here.

No, I mean, they're different functionally and they're different culturally too, because you're talking about something that is generative AI and then it's being sampled and then it's being used in something else, which I mean, there's ethics. issues around, but different ethic issues than we're kind of like, you know, talking about in the other example. The ethic issues here are based mostly around like, is there maybe two, three, four different soul groups whose production, musical ideas, vocals, instrumentation were essentially lifted to create that piece that was then sampled and used in another song. That's an ethics issue there. The ethics issue in the other instance is you are sort of like embodying someone else's voice. Where do you draw the line around that, per se?

Could I hire a Dead Ringer, Tupac impersonator and have him on the song and have him wrap the things that I want him to wrap? You know what I mean? Like, where do you draw the line? It's still very much in bad taste because using Tupac's voice, you are representing feelings and ideas and emotions that you have no way of knowing whether or not the man himself would have endorsed. You're using his voice and his likeness to basically support and, you know, you know,

argue for ideas and feelings that frankly he may have been disgusted with on some level as well as also you know let's just say for you know history's sake here and remind everybody uh also advocate that kendrick bring up the weird pedo allegation stuff right and dare him to mention it how did that go what happened after that how yeah what did happen after that i don't know what happened i know there's a lawsuit going on now but i don't know so it's like literally using his voice to go to him into talking about stuff that he's now taking issue with him talking about. But yeah, you know, it's it's it's quite, I guess you could say like, uh, disrespectful, you know, and on a level that, you know, goes beyond like, uh, just sampling

the guy's voice and maybe a song that he would have hated, who knows. Yeah. It's definitely like functionally different than let's say like the Chappelle show skit where like they're doing the new Tupac songs that like referenced modern day stuff, you know, because he's not dead. Sure, sure, yeah.

Knowing Drake and like how basic Drake is, like, I'm sure like that was the pitch in the room, to be honest. But like, like, if there was a moment, if it feels like if there was a moment to convince

listeners that this was a problem and it mattered and should be talked about, like we kind of blew past it last summer in a way. Does that, does that clock to you? I mean, again, like with a lot of things,

I feel like, uh, The problems with it lie underneath the surface and come out mostly in the way that the sausage is made. You know, it's like, I mean, you know, AI generated music is a problem in the same way that, like, you know, phones are a problem. Right. You know, but the thing is like, when you look at the phone and you hold the phone and you're using the phone, there's nothing about it that confronts you with, like, the exploitative slave minds. They need to dig minerals out of to, you know, to use. for the technology in the phone, you know what I mean? And the thing is like with an AI generated song,

there's nothing about the song that when you hear it, unless it's like literally a dead ringer for another artist who's not getting credited, that confronts you with the fact that like, there were seven artists who were stolen from not paid and not acknowledged in the process of creating this track. This perfectly sets up for Velvet Sundown, who despite being obviously AI slop, and like literally the whole thing is just, you know, an AI prompt that's playing. out. They also appear to be offended by the fact that they're being called AI slop and people are saying that they're generated entirely by AI, at least sort of. We're going to get to how complicated this gets in just a second.

There was all sorts of like weird public statements and gaslighting going on with like some of the fallout from them being sort of called out as an AI band and people just being like, none of these people even tried to go to a live show where we've performed. and it's like, oh, when are people supposed to do that asshole? You know, it's like, I think I responded to one of those tweets. I was just like, shut the fuck up. You know, this is lame as hell. Actually, wait, hold on.

I was a Velvet Sundown fan in June. You were in the Velvet Sundown Mosh Pit. Yeah, I was on June 5th, 2025. I was there, man. You were only there on June 15th, 2025. Right. I was there at the beginning, man. Right, yeah.

No, they did the whole thing where they were like, everybody go this way, everybody go that way. Now crash into each other. You know, it's like they had a wall of death going on. They're like, yeah, the Velvet Sundown wall. Were you there for the Velvet Sundown Wall of Death? He's so good, man. It was so, whoa.

Those are craziest wall of death I've ever seen. Crazier than Slipknot. Yeah, but I think your point is right. With AI, it's never the one thing in particular. It's the bigger problem that it causes. We're not talking about, you know, some kid in his bedroom, AI generating a guitar riff and then remixing it and putting his own drums or his own synths around it or wrapping over it or whatever it is.

We're talking about someone who's generating full albums, a full band from the machine and making, yeah, slop. If from the outset when a Velvet Sundown song came on, like there was some kind of like warning label or tell the audience that like what you're about to hear is a fake ass song from a fake ass band that stole from these bands from this platform. You know, not everybody, but a great deal of people would like, you know, sit up and be like, I don't want to hear that. So how do, how would you describe? So I want to, I want to circle back to Velvet Sundown. How would you just how would you describe the music? Because I would say it's like, I don't know, like the worst older brother rock music you could imagine. Like it's like a dream of a black light poster filled bedroom. Like it's it's it's got that uncanny thing you mentioned where it's like, clearly not possible to be from the time period it's supposed to be from. But it, it's just like this miasma of like, I don't know,

it's not jam band. It's just a pastiche of just basically every generic rock sound that you could imagine. Like, it's basically the musical equivalent of like, if you were forced to at gunpoint write an essay about all the important rock music of the 60s and the 70s, but then you were told like, you know,

the moment that you put pencil to paper that you were, limited to 500 letters. You know, you're like, well, yeah. How am I supposed to write about all the great rock music of the 50s and 60s and 70s in 500 letters? What the fuck are you talking about? You know what I mean? Like, you would end up with just like the most surface level gloss over of like whatever

that time period was artistically. And of course, like, with all that compacted information, you're not really going to dig deeply into much of anything. So the music just kind of like ends up sounding like this pastiche of a bunch of different things from that. Now, I will say, like, you know, there are elements of the, of the AI incorporated into making the Velvet Sundown's music that is deceptively good because hearing maybe like one or two of those tracks in passing, you would think like, okay, that kind of set. That's passable. It sounds like a band, maybe not a great band. I would drive drunk to this music. You know, like, that's the kind of genre it is. When you listen to the entire album, you're like, how is this a band? This sounds like eight different bands.

Yeah. Like it feels more like a compilation. You know, and the only thread kind of like holding it all together is this like really vague notion of like, yeah, 60, 70s music, man. Yeah. Some of it's kind of bluesy. Some of it sounds like a really shitty black keys rip off. Yeah, AI music and the black keys sound very similar. Actually, I got to say. You know, they really gave them the blueprint on that one.

Describing the Velvet Sundown's output is really funny. Because as you're sort of trying to like pinpoint what it sounds like, what is really, silly here is like they put out their first quote unquote album which is called floating on echoes which is very uh you know on the nose it was uploaded to spotify on june 5th they then put out a follow up album on the 20th of june yeah they put out the two albums and the two covers look almost like identical yeah uh people immediately notice their ai it blows up on the anti a i subreddit a user right it's not a shred of evidence on the internet that this band has ever existed a i generated artist photo and album covers description reads like chat chabit M-Dash is included, which isn't fair.

Journalists were using M-Dash's first. They just AI stole it from newsrooms. I want to make that clear. I'm an M-Dash fan. And then a woman on TikTok said that it was the first song on her Discover Weekly. And then by June 25th, the writer and content creator, Chris Dalla Rivah makes a TikTok about how you can tell its AI. Now, do you know about sort of the hallmarks of like, you know, like the fingers thing

with images, but do you know the certain hallmarks of like AI music, like how to tell? Personally, at least one of the kind of giveaways for it, for me, when I heard the Velvet Sun, Sundown for the first time, I was listening to all their songs. Yeah. There was something about kind of the recording that sounded to me, and it's difficult to describe, and I don't know if this is sort of like a tell for other people, but like the quality and the texture and the aesthetic of the instrumentation sounded like a combination of kind of like a super old school tape recording and on top of it like a really bad MP3. Like if I was listening to like an original master recording of a Doors album, but it was like a 128K MP3 that I downloaded from Napster, you know, like it's something in between there. Like it sounds like something bad, which I know a lot of people don't have that reference point because like they didn't grow up downloading music, you know. But it sounds like a combination of this podcast definitely did. A real geriatric millennial audience here.

But yeah, it sounds like a combination of like a bad MP3 download and just like are really. old school tape recording. And for me, whenever I hear like that mix where it sounds like kind of squishy and scuffed, like a squishy and scuffed combination of those two, to me, that's usually a tell that it feels like kind of AI. I want to read this one sort of description. So of Velvet Sundown before we go to the break. So in Chris Dahlia Rivers video, he describes the metallic sound in the singer's voice.

The song title, Dust on the Wind is a whole lot like dust in the wind, obviously. the photos are clearly AI generated. Your bio at the time, and quoted a fake quote from Billboard, which read, they sound like the memory of something you never lived and somehow make it feel real, which is awesome. You know, if you or any of your listeners go into that like whole spiel, that whole description, like one of the funniest things about it to me is like how inadvertently backhanded it is because there's multiple sort of like descriptors in there that mention just like how easily

their music like slips into the background and how much you don't really need to pay attention to. And it's like, wow, riveting. That's so incredible. I love that this band like makes background music. Right. They make Muzac, basically. And we're going to, we're going to talk about what happens once the rest of the internet discovers the Velvet Sundown, right after a word from our sponsors who are absolutely real human beings, selling real products that you can buy. People want to take away your access to the internet in all kinds of different ways. So you should get a VPN, NordVPN. It masks your IP address. It changes your browser's location. And it makes your online life just a lot easier. And it's pretty easy to use.

You connect with one click or you can use their automated connection feature to protect yourself without having to even do anything. They have over 8,000 servers in 126 countries, which basically lets you change where your computer is locking in from. So if you're in America and in a state where you're not allowed to access certain websites, you can change your IP address to come from a country that has proper internet privacy laws. Even better, NordVPN has one of the fastest VPN connections on the market, and one account works for up to 10 devices.

To get the best discount off your NordVPN plan, go to NordVPN.com slash panic world, and that link will also give you four extra months on the two-year plan. There is no risk with Nord's 30-day money-back guarantee. The link in our episode description, NordVPN.com slash panic world to get that discount. You kind of knew from the get-go that something was up with this ban. you kind of knew that they were AI. Things get really weird, though, when journalists start poking around, like, the Rolling Stone team trying to figure out, like, who is responsible for this.

And that's when we see on June 29th, which is like four days after Riva's TikTok video, and a Twitter account appear for Velvet Sundown, which posts absolutely crazy that so-called journalists keep pushing the lazy, baseless theory that the Velvet Sundown is AI generated with zero evidence. And then Rolling Stone writes their story about it. it and they put in their piece, the streaming service, Dizer noted that some of the tracks on this album may have been created using artificial intelligence. The site music ally determined that most of the Spotify playlist, which featured the band came from just four Spotify accounts,

and no one could explain how the band's catalog ended up on a playlist of songs evoking the Vietnam War. Which I thought was hilarious because like, uh, what? Yeah. And I want to talk about sort of like, I want to stop here for a second and just sort of talk about streaming platforms role in this. Because, yeah, Yes, Spotify, I think, has gotten a lot of attention for allowing AI music to, you know, spread across the platform. But this is happening almost on every platform on the internet that features music. And so, I mean, from your point of view, is someone who works on YouTube, you work closely with the, you know these places really well. Like, do they not seem to understand that this is a poison pill for them inevitably?

Like, does something like you, like, does a platform like YouTube not seem to understand that like, if it's all AI, the whole thing goes bust? Well, from what I understand, and I have not seen a lot of people covering this too widely. I have mentioned this offhandedly in my videos recently. YouTube, from what I understand, does have, like, pretty effective and extensive sort of like, you know, programs when it comes to, like, recognizing certain patterns and things and information. And, you know, especially when it comes to like copyright and music and various sorts of media being incorporated into whatever is being uploaded to YouTube. And they have taken some initiative lately in announcing that when it comes to AI generated content, I guess officially now, according to YouTube TOS, and I don't know how they're enforcing this, but still, they've said that you're not supposed to be able to monetize it. Right. I saw this as well. So I don't know, you know, again, like how extensively that's being applied.

What if I shoot a video? And I don't know, it's a partially AI generated script or something. Like how AI is to AI and what are you using on the back end to sort of like recognize this? Because as we have seen repeatedly with most instances of AI, the people who are generating it and uploading the stuff are not coming out and admitting off the bat that this is like AI. So, you know, you would have to leave it to platforms like YouTube to do whatever they're supposed to on the back end to kind of like, you know, detect it. And how they're detecting it, I don't know. I imagine that there's probably going to be at least some AI that's slipping through. And then from there, you know, if they're faced with a situation where some of this shit is actually going super viral and actually generating them quite a bit of money, you know, that's going to require somebody, you know, behind the scenes to be like, this is getting a lot of hits. This is generating a lot of revenue. This is getting engagement. But we have made this commitment and we do have to sort of like, you know, nip this in the bud. Unfortunately, there have been instances of stuff in the past where YouTube has been like, you know, allegedly wholly against us.

something, but like the moment that it actually started generating revenue, maybe it's like not so bad. Yeah, very funny how that works. I'm glad that they've come out and said this statement and that they're, you know, at least like vocally starting to make this commitment. I just hope they sort of follow through with it. I'm also just like fascinated by the idea that like say something like Dizer or Spotify or Apple Music. I'm fascinated at the idea that they think that people would just happily sit and listen unthinkingly to music to such an extent on their platform. platform and pay for the privilege of doing so that they would just listen to AI slop all day. Like I, maybe that's naive of me.

And maybe like the scale that they're at, they're looking at people's user behavior and going at people don't care, it's just music. But the idea of taking money away from real artists and just monetizing AI slop and then being able to listen to it infinitely just seems like the end of everything in a way. We're really at a point where we are starting to kind of just begin to see. what the internet is going to look like. You know, it really is just like sort of becoming like almost impossible to avoid, you know, because even if you're blocking like some of the most notorious accounts for posting

this stuff, um, there's more just sort of popping up every day. It's, it's, uh, again, becoming difficult to just not see. And it's clearly adding to sort of the unreality of the internet. Like you can't really trust what you're looking at or listening to. And in that, in fact, this is a twist in the Velvet Sundown story, which going back the Rolling Stone article, they end up quoting a spokesperson for the band, Andrew Felon, which is a great name for reasons you'll understand in just a second tier listener, who said to Rolling Stone personally, I'm interested in art hoaxes.

We live in a world where things that are fake have sometimes even more impact than things that are real. And that's messed up. But that's the reality we now face. It's marketing. It's trolling. Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And of course, we then discover the next day that this guy has nothing to do.

with the Velvet Sundown Project in any way. He is just a random guy that claimed to be the spokesperson and got interviewed by Rollingstock. That's hilarious. It's pretty good. And he continues to post from the account, even though everyone knows it's all bullshit. So you mentioned this in the first section of the episode, but almost exclusively of this stuff is being used by bad actors. So far, and I stare at a lot of AI stuff, you know, just through the course of work every week. I have not come across a person using AI for a good reason.

Like I actually haven't found one yet. I keep waiting for that moment where someone's, you know, we had this with sampling where you had like kids who didn't have money or access or talent to play like instruments, using sampling as a way around it and like creating music. And so there was that whole narrative in the very beginnings of sort of like hip hop blowing up,

like that's what it was for. I am not actually seeing that with. I'm not seeing stories of someone being like, yeah, I actually didn't have any access to like music production tools. So I generated an AI beat and I wrapped over it. Like that's not actually happening, which I think is for anyone listening to this who's like on the fence about this stuff, like that to me is a massive tell that like no one is genuinely embracing this stuff, except for a little Wayne apparently. I think a lot of artists just don't really understand what the protocols could or should be. And a lot of artists understand that like because of the history of sampling and the way the sampling works, You know, everybody wants to sample, but nobody wants to be sampled and sort of have their ideas completely taken from them and then have no recourse whatsoever when it comes to like actually being able to get any sort of credit or payment, you know, for the way that their music or ideas may have been incorporated against their will into that sort of thing.

Sampling could have very much brought us in the same direction that generative AI is very much right now. But the thing is like the moment it started kind of taking the music world in the country by storm, like the labels were very litigious and they were very active. I mean, sometimes I would say unfairly early on, you know, whereas like some artists would kind of like skate by and a record like, for example, Paul's Boutique. Sure. You'd never be able to make that record today unless you just had the most massive budget. But because that record dropped when it did and was made when it was, it kind of got a little grandfathered in. You know what I mean? So because there are at least some levels of expectation now, and there's all sorts of, like, you know, ways through which people can go after you legally if they do catch you sampling without any sort of like, you know, acknowledgement.

You know, there's a lot of people who are sort of like hesitant now or they're wary or they're careful about it. These days, right now, there's no such protections around AI. And part of the reason that that is is like the labels aren't really doing much of anything to curtail it. And I have a working theory on why that is is like, you know, the three majors are kind of like sitting back and just letting this kind of broil and bubble up and just do whatever it's going to do until it gets to the point where it's actually like generating some serious cash. And then they can sort of like step in with millions of dollars to be like, give us this, you know. And then we get to own it and we can have some kind of like proprietary control over it. And then, you know, we basically have the catalog that we can just feed it. And then once they do that, they're just going to start fucking AI generating their own artists.

Well, so this is what's really interesting here. So we have the platforms that are allowing bands like Velvet Sundown to rack up millions, millions and views. You know, it's unclear. I have not actually seen anything about how, if they've made. made money off those, you know, downloads or streams or whatever. Like from, like from Spotify, you mean? Yeah. Like, I'm not clear if they're, if they're making money.

I would suspect yes. I would suspect yes. If that's true, that's really interesting because right now, there's only basically one piece of legislation, one kind of ruling in America about AI content, which is from the U.S. Copyright Office, which basically states that you cannot trademark any AI generated content unless you can prove to the U.S. Copyright Office that you'd, changed it in some meaningful way.

That's the only thing we've got here. So if you look at the landscape right now, and there's no way that a platform like Spotify can knock down every single air-generated artist that's filling up the platform and using it to just sort of passively make, you know, microsense or whatever off the play. So we are leading to a legal doomsday situation where these bands had, Velvet Sundown didn't change anything.

You can't, most of the platforms like Suno or Udoo don't even let you export stems, you know, like for listeners, that would be like the pieces of the song that you could then put together in an audio workstation to make, you know, into something new. Like, they're not even doing the BBL Drizzy sample thing. So it's hard not to think like, you know, six months, a year from now, there's just going to be a mass lawsuit frenzy. As, as you said, the labels realize we can just generate our own Ariana Grande songs for all eternity. Yeah, there's a potential future in which that happens. I guess it's just kind of a question of like, who's going to pull the pin out of the grenade, you know?

They're all waiting. Yeah. I have a hard time seeing Spotify being responsible for that because, I mean, even before the Velvet Sundown, there were already AI generated tracks on their making money proliferating throughout tons of playlists, you know? Of course. At this point, we have countless cases of random songs from random no follower, no following, no presence, no brand, no nothing accounts that like, have these songs, they have tons of streams because they're on these playlists and outside of those couple of tracks on the Spotify platform, they don't have any other catalog to speak of.

That's just happened so many times at this point that it's kind of just hard to sort of see it as, oh, well, this is just a coincidence that just keeps happening over and over and over and over and over and happens most specifically and most often on Spotify, like in comparison with every other music streaming platform out there that also has playlists and also has playlist curators and also. most likely has some AI generated music on the platform too, you know? And we and we've already Can you imagine the way, wait, can you imagine the kind of sicko that's like sitting and listening to AI generate music in high fidelity on Apple music? Can you imagine the absolute psychopath that is doing that? There's already stories and, you know, interviews backing a lot of what I'm saying in a recent book by Liz Pelley called Moon Machine, where she talks about the cottage industry around, artists, which has already existed for years, where, you know, studio musicians and session musicians will basically, like, sort of make a fake band profile, and they will essentially, you know,

for Spotify, be going into the studio and, like, cutting these, like, you know, really generic two, three minute bland instrumental cuts, like, for a random jazz playlist, just to fill out time because Spotify makes money off of those. And, you know, they're just like trying to create a playlist experience that is less likely to make people click away. So you just like put in as many tracks that sound exactly the same as possible. So nothing's like drawing your attention to the shit. So like there's already a cottage industry around this sort of thing. The only thing that AI has ushered in now is like now they're just auto generating, you know, the Musac. They're not paying other artists to make it. It's the dream of every platform to finally just auto generate the endless

content stream. You need to keep people locked in. But after the break, we're going to talk about the mindset of the average platform music enjoyer and whether or not they care about this stuff. But before that, a word once again from our very human and very real sponsors because the only thing better than human beings are brands. So the Washington Post did like a man on the street article where they asked people about the Velvet Sundown, kind of asking if they cared about it. And some people cared about it.

Some people didn't, but they also quoted this yoga teacher who really did not care about it. Byron Day Marseille, great yoga teacher name, initially heard the Velvet Sundowns drift beyond the flame. Dude, these song titles are so fucking bad in a video of someone dancing. Before long, he worked the song into a yoga class, not realizing I was involved. It's got this emotional tone to it. It's so good for the end of a power yoga or vinyasa, where you're deeply stretching, said Marseille, who plans on continuing to use the song in classes. Which I can't really think of a more cutting display of musicality there than like it's good for my yoga class actually. Right.

I mean, unfortunately, we kind of like, one of my favorite things about music is how it's something that you can experience almost anywhere. And it's something you can bring with you a lot of places. And it's something that can complement a lot of different sort of like experiences and activities. And, you know, I mean, it's one of the reasons that we associate music so often with, like, certain experiences or memories and so on and so forth. But, like, you know, this has kind of like led to, I think, almost like an abuse of the art form in a way to where, you know, I feel like as music fans, allegedly, I think there's just too much acceptance or expectation that music more often than not be functional. and we're concerned. I see what you mean. Yeah.

We're concerned more with like whether or not it enhances an activity or sort of like a task we have to do versus is it good. You know, is it good? Is it quality? Is it like speaking to a human experience or soul, whatever you want to refer to it as? And, you know, unfortunately, like with that expectation or that need that does increase the likelihood that like, you know, you're going to have AI models that will step in and be like, yeah, I'll make. some soulless bullshit that you can have on to do this thing that you are trying to do, you know? I hadn't thought about that, but that's really interesting where if you create an ecosystem where you're supposed to listen to music all day long, obviously, like, music can't be your

sole focus. And I'm not saying that, like, you have to sit in front of, like, the radio and, like, think about the music you're listening to. But it has led to an environment where not only are platforms creating playlists, like, to fit your mood. but they're also creating playlist to fit where you are. And more importantly, they're creating playlist to fit what you're doing as just like a world of music. And there's obviously never going to be enough human made music of a certain quality. Like, because you, you can't be listening to like Daniel Johnston and like your yoga class.

You can't go find outsider art to fill those gaps with. You have to find pastiche level, nothing music to just listen to. And that's where AI fits in. Yeah. And there's always sort of this expectation or this hope from people who sort of like want these sorts of playlist and want these sort of experiences that the playlists or the music they're being exposed to that serves as this purpose be new, you know, so it's like even even if like I, myself, which maybe I could, you know, if you tasked me with like, I want music to listen to at

the library, sure, like if I devoted a week to it, I could probably make a playlist of, you know, songs that potentially lasted hours of perfect library accompaniment jams, you know. But the thing is, like, you know, you can't do that forever. Eventually, you're going to run out of stuff that sounds like it would fit that mood. So, you know, you're either going to have to be constantly digging for new artists that speak to that, which obviously is very difficult and can be a chore. Or, you know, you just use some program to make the stuff just out of thin air. Ian Bogost and the Atlantic touched on this same idea and kind of went even a bit further

into a direction that I hadn't really considered, which is if you make music more utilitarian in to fill up blank spaces, it starts to separate, you know, from what it used to mean culturally. And so Bogos writes, music used to define someone's identity, punk, rock, country, alternative, and so forth, asking what music do you like could elicit a person's taste, values, and fashion sense? The rockers might hang out behind the gym and smoke cigarettes. They were, I was with the ska kids watching the Digimon movie. That's where I was.

They were a click, just like the jocks and the nerds. Finding, joining, and deepening a connection to a music subculture required effort. You had to find the right venues, record, zines, or crowd. In that era, music was tribal. Not so much today, the internet has fragmented and flattened subcultures. And AI music slots perfectly in there where it's turning the whole thing into just a vibe that you don't even have to focus on or think about. There's no way you could attend a Velvet Sundown concert, although I'm curious how that would ever work if an AI band got popular enough? Would you have a guerrilla situation?

Would there be like multiple cover bands who owns it? How does it work? But all that stuff gets flattened by AI, like completely. Hear me out here. You know, I'm going to play devil's advocate for a second. If we did end up in a situation where fake AI generated band has hit record on Spotify, and they're generating millions of streams and lots of interest and getting, you know, lots of monthly listeners.

And then that puts the people responsible for it and the label in a position where they're like, well, we need to make some money on this on the tour. And then they actually end up having to hire Revenue. real life human musicians to play it. Like that would be an instance of AI leading to human employment. So yeah, that could work. I mean, it could work. Which I mean, you know, right now human musicians generating human music can't even create

situations where humans are actually being able to get out there on tour. So maybe what we need is AI to start making the music so that we actually end up sort of like performing live in front of people. Look, machine gun Kelly needs all the help he can get. And if an AI can figure out a way to help him sound better live. So you'd mention like, you know, how prevalent is this stuff? And we don't have a lot of hard data,

but I do want to hit this before we kind of close out this section. Apple and Spotify, they're not flagging anything as AI. Like they just don't even, they're not tracking it. Deaser, which is a music streaming platform that appears to only exist in advertisements on bus stops and in Germany,

I guess, reports that 18% of new tracks uploaded to Deaser are AI generated. Yeah, they're at least trying from what they say to make note of when it is on there. I shouldn't make fun of poor D's here. They are, they,

they, they are at least doing something good here. And Spotify will remove accounts that release fake songs by real artists, which is another decent step. Maybe they can figure out how to remove that Romanian electronic artist from Owens page, the emo band, because that keeps popping up while they're in there. But almost none of these platforms are going track by track.

And, and it's even less clear, you know, to figure out what happens when these things go viral. What I wanted to end on, did you get a sense that Velvet Sundown had fans, like actual, like fan fans? No. Okay.

You know, look, I mean, I'm well known on the internet for my opinions. Sorry. It comes to, you know, what, yeah, I know, believe it or not. When it comes to music reviews, I'm often the first person, a lot of people think of. And when I do give an opinion of something. especially when it's a strong opinion, it has a tendency to reach that crowd of people that would disagree with it the most first. So when I do say something more often than not that people find disagreeable, whoever may be

disagreeing with it, I hear from them pretty quickly. There are a few things over the course of my career, which I think I've come out against that I've gotten as little pushback as I have on this, you know, so. So if there are Velvet Underground, you know, I'm sorry, Velvet Sundown, hardcore Velvet Sundown fans out there, if the fans are out there, they're very silent and they're clearly not willing to come up and, you know, stand up for their favorites, even when I'm in their replies telling them to shut the fuck up. So, you know, where are the sundowners in my emails threatening my life, you know, it's like, I'm going to cut your fucking head off for not for not respecting the Velvet Sundown. They're real band, bitch. Yeah. As long as they don't like create like a festival called like sundown town.

I suppose that's probably fine. Although who knows? Like I'm sure we're not far off from like some weird right wing like embrace of AI music. It's like this is our music. Like this is real music. That's already happening. Have you not seen like the shitty pro Elon Musk Trump thrash metal on on Twitter? Yeah.

But I make those. That's my that's my side gig is making Elon. Oh, okay. I got it. I got it. Could you ever see a world? Like I guess this comes back to my like, be more interesting about this stuff,

you know, problem, but like could you see a world where like there's a human fan base for an AI group? And if so, like, what do you think it would be? Like, look,

I think, I think it's possible, but I think it would have to be like more human intention behind it, sort of like, even kind of thinking to the techno-cult, thing that you were just saying. Like if somebody used an AI platform and we would have to rewind a few years, but somebody used an AI platform to come up with a DJ that does nothing but sort of like make QAnon Techno. Kuanon Techno is so fun. Exactly. But the thing is like it wouldn't be

entirely sort of AI generated because there'd need to be some kind of like main brain behind it, you know, sort of like typing the Q posts in their verbatim and you know, being like, oh, you know, all the Q transmissions, make sure they're in the lyrics, okay, so that, you know, the QAnon fans hear them. But like everything else, I guess, could be AI generated about it. I got one. I got an idea. It's an AI artist that makes Christian rap songs about abstinence and not masturbating. And you could tour it in churches.

I think it would kill. I think it would crush. Absolutely. I think it would be so good. I don't think Christian youth camps would have any sort of like, you know, I mean, you know, like, You would need to go into the Bible and find out whether or not AI is an abomination. I don't know, is it? I mean, it's, I don't know if AI is an abomination.

I mean, you know. That could be in our next episode of Panic World. I want to, so the last thing here is I want to run through a couple ways to identify AI music if you come across it in the wild. So we talked about the baselines, but also bad rhymes. AI can't really understand like the difference between a rhyme on the page and a rhyme with your mouth. It uses a lot of borrowing. So you kind of mention this.

Like it's stuff that sounds like other stuff. It does not understand song structure, really. Like it's a lot of bridges that kind of go to nowhere. And this is a really interesting ghost instrument. So it's like the AI thinks that there might be horns there, but it doesn't generate the horns or it won't generate the marimba or whatever, but you can kind of still hear it because of the frequency. So if you come across that stuff,

listeners, you know that you're listening to AI generate music and then you can decide whether or not you want to live a life without happiness and human joy and keep listening to it or not. It's up to you. I want to thank you for coming on the show. This was a delightful conversation. Usually I ask our guests, like, where can people follow you online? But that seems ridiculous. So how would you rate this conversation?

What would you give it? Yeah, I mean, I'd give it a strong nine at the very least to give it a strong nine. And yeah, as you said, you know, all you got to do is look up Anthony Fantano on Pornhub than I pop right. That's actually, I bet you, they have the strictest AI guidelines of like any platform. Panic World is a production of Courier. It is written and produced by Grant Irving and hosted by me, Ryan Broderick. Josh Fielstead is our production coordinator and our amazing researcher is Adam Bumis. From Courier is Shane Verkest, who edits our video episodes along with our producer, Devin Maroni, and National Managing Director and Executive Producer Kevin Dreyfus. R.C. DeMezzo is their VP of Brand

and Social. Charlotte Robinson is their deputy director of brand and social. Mary Ann Couga is their director of marketing. And Tracy Kaplan is the senior vice president of sales and distribution. If you want to sponsor the show or give us products to sell, she's the one to talk to. You can email her at Tracy at courier newsroom.com. Lastly, here's my advice for you. Chill out and touch grass while you still can. Just a quick reminder, our Patreon is only 50 cents this month to celebrate our one-year anniversary. You can go to patreon.com slash panic world and use code panic year all uppercase. Panic year.