The Velvet Sundown: it was only a hopeless fancy

This week, a rock band that amassed over 1 million monthly listeners on Spotify revealed itself to be entirely AI-generated. The band's members, backstory, and music were all created by artificial intelligence. Their song "Dust on the Wind" hit no1 on Spotify's Viral 50 chart in multiple countries.

Sound familiar? In 1984, Orwell wrote about a "versificator"- a mechanical device that composed songs for the masses:

"There was a whole chain of separate departments dealing with proletarian literature, music, drama, and entertainment generally... sentimental songs which were composed entirely by mechanical means on a special kind of kaleidoscope known as a versificator."

The parallels are striking. Most listeners can't tell the difference.

Basic creativity is aOK

When millions of people can't distinguish between human and AI-generated art, what does that say about creativity itself? Are we discovering that what we thought was uniquely human expression might actually be patterns sophisticated enough to be algorithmic?

The uncanny valley - not just a river in Egypt

We've long worried about AI's "uncanny valley"—that eerie almost-but-not-quite-human quality. But what if the valley is far narrower than we imagined? The Velvet Sundown's music appeared on playlists alongside Creedence Clearwater Revival, suggesting the gap between "authentic" and "artificial" might be smaller than our artistic sensibilities want to admit.

We are all Proles now

In 1984, the versificator created content specifically for the "proles"—the working class masses who consumed entertainment without questioning its origin. But here's the uncomfortable question: Are we all the proles now? When we stream music algorithmically, consume content through recommendation engines, and rarely dig deeper than a catchy hook, are we participating in our own versificator system?

Amazing to think how much of what we consume was already formulaic enough to be mechanized. The versificator is already here. And it's got a million monthly listeners.

The tune had been haunting London for weeks past. It was one of countless similar songs published for the benefit of the proles by a sub-section of the Music Department. The words of these songs were composed without any human intervention whatever on an instrument known as a versificator. But the woman sang so tunefully as to turn the dreadful rubbish into an almost pleasant sound.

The tune has been haunting us for weeks past. We just didn't know it wasn't human.