'' THE VELVET SUNDOWN '' : SPOTIFY'S HONOURS

BUT IS SPOTIFY'S hottest new band even real? The Velvet Sundown's 850K listeners fuel AI rumours.

A band named The Velvet Sundown has drawn intense scrutiny after its music gained hundreds of thousands of streams on Spotify, despite virtually no public presence or verifiable identity, reports the BBC.

The group, which has more than 850,000 monthly listeners and a verified Spotify page, emerged online several weeks ago.

Yet none of the four named musicians have granted interviews, appear to have social media accounts, or have performed live.

The absence of a human trace has led to growing suspicions that The Velvet Sundown and its music are generated by artificial intelligence [AI], a claim the band has denied via social media.

The controversy deepened when Rolling Stone US reported that a spokesperson for the band had admitted its music was created using an AI tool called SUNO, only for the publication to later reveal that the spokesperson himself, a man named Andrew Frelon, was a hoax.

Frelon told the magazine the deception was a '' deliberate plot to hoax the media.''

Professor Gina Neff, of the Minderoo Centre for Technology and Democracy at the University of Cambridge, said the incident reflects the broader concerns around digital authenticity and AI.

'' Whether this is an AI band, may not seem important,'' she told the BBC.

The World Students Society thanks The Express Tribune.