A tragic end has taken the real human band the Velvet Sundown is based on before their time:

Or that’s what “they” want you to believe. Maybe it’s all a cover up on top of a cover up… The world may never know the truth of this incredible, stupid story…

I noticed that some people, including journalists, seem to have misinterpreted the latest CBC reveal. User Robert1950 on the forum Guitarscanada.com posted a link to the article with the thread title, “Creator of AI Band Velvet Sundown revealed.” No comments so far have accumulated.

A user on Bluesky also seems to have misinterpreted the substance of the actual reveal, referencing the article, “Well the creator just unmasked himself… and he is Canadian.”

A website called TenAsia takes that a step farther and misattributes a quote from the “real” band to me:

“The creator, Tim Boucher, a web platform safety and policy expert from Quebec, stated in an interview with foreign media, “Velvet Sundown exists somewhere between being fully human and fully machine,” and expressed his desire to challenge music copyright and identity through artistic provocation using AI.”

Granted, these are all easy mistakes to make, especially for people who are not professionally following — or inventing — the story. Or, for people who haven’t quite read and absorbed all the details in the article. But no matter! This is the internet – where we’re going, we don’t need to read “articles!”

Speaking of skimming articles, I thought this “song of the summer” piece from CNN was a bit of a dud, since it not only suggests there is none for 2025, but proposes couldn’t we maybe just go back and use one from last summer? Meanwhile trashing what is obviously far and away the *true* “Song of the Summer 2025”:

Or maybe, Errico suggested, the song of the summer is one that best exemplifies the quickening encroachment of AI into creative fields, like AI band Velvet Sundown’s AI song, “Dust on the Wind.” Even the title sounds like a Fleetwood Mac-inspired ChatGPT prompt.

Lastly, in my round-up of mildly interesting miscellaneous Velvet Sundown misinformation bits and bobs is this piece from Charleston, South Carolina’s Post and Courier paper about a local musician (confusingly named after a different geographic locale, Johnny Delaware) who was misattributed as being an AI music act. What’s the word for this, when someone is accused of being AI, but they are not and/or they deny it? “AI-jacketing” maybe?

An article about the phenomenon appearing in The Atlantic that’s raising questions about transparency and legality regarding AI on streaming platforms referred to Johnny Delaware as another potential fake band. The story labeled Delaware a “related artist” to The Velvet Sundown on Spotify. 

In fact, he’s a very real artist with quite the following right here in the Holy City — he has a show coming up at the Music Farm on Aug. 8.

In response to the AI claim, Delaware released a video on social media calling out the journalist behind the July 4 story for not properly fact-checking. 

Awkward. An archived version of the Atlantic article mentions Delaware in passing, within the context of trying to find other songs that sound similar to The Velvet Sundown:

I pondered for a moment whether any of the other artists on my custom playlist (the South Carolina folk-rock singer-songwriter Johnny Delaware? The Belgian folk-pop quartet Lemon Straw?) might be fake—and how one might try to suss that out.

This appears to be the above-mentioned Delaware response video to the Atlantic piece. It won’t embed here, so you’ll have to watch it on Instagram.

Delaware in the video suggests the author of the piece didn’t simply Google the musician to see their many videos and other media artifacts. Incidentally, a widely re-posted AP article about spotting AI-generated songs in the wild suggests that listeners “do a background check” before ultimately conceding that there are “no easy answers.”

In the Post and Courier Piece, Delaware is subsequently quoted:

“I mean, I have no control, so all you can do is observe and let it ruin your life or just laugh at it,” he told The Post and Courier.

Delaware said he wrote both The Atlantic reporter and the podcast hosts, who offered to interview him. He declined, at least for now. 

“It’s a really weird situation,” he said. “I don’t want to be involved with it, but it’s kind of following me around. … Like maybe misinformation about me being a robot isn’t worth me getting into.” 

I’ve… obviously taken a really different tack in this saga, and clearly I disagree with the approach Delaware is outlining above. One, I think he does have a lot of control here to shape it in the media and on social platforms. Two, whether or not you want to be involved with them, when things like this come up, they are simply opportunities. Me, I tend to lean into this kind of thing. I guess I tend to, at the end of the day, maybe even encourage misinformation about me being a robot. But that’s just me!