The news shows another example of the seismic impact AI is having on the music industry. In this case a scammer is preying on fans and music collectors who are desperate for new and unreleased music from one of the industry's biggest, most reclusive stars. On underground forums, music collectors often privately buy tracks they believe to have leaked from their favorite artists, or participate in “group buys” on Discord to crowdsource the necessary funds. Some members of a music leaking forum are already lamenting that AI will destroy aspects of their community.
Mourningassassin explained to the outlet that they hired a musician to create nine instrumentals that would feature Ocean’s vocals, which were in turn created with AI. The model used to create those vocal tracks was apparently trained with high-quality vocal snippets of the artist’s voice. Mourningassassin began posting snippets of the unreleased songs to a music collector’s forum, allegedly under the guise that they had leaked, and found that people were believing that the tracks were real.
Has elusive R&B artist Frank Ocean finally come out of hiding to release some new music? No, sorry. An anonymous con artist has allegedly made thousands of dollars hocking AI-generated Frank Ocean tracks over Discord.
Vice says that the tracks were thought to be leaked songs from the artist, which were put up for sale on an Internet music collector’s market and Discord. The trickster, who reportedly goes by mourningassasin, allegedly offered users and moderators on Discord the songs in exchange for upwards of $US4,000 ($5,553) each. Mourningassassin told the outlet that they made around $13,000 CAD through the sales, and said that at least one of the songs up for sale was actually a real leak from Ocean, and that it was sold in an attempt to boost credibility.
As Motherboard has previously reported, AI-generated music that can copy the voices and style of anyone, including massive stars, isn't just a threat to artists and record labels. The technology has gotten increasingly convincing in just the last few weeks, to the point where it can be difficult for even obsessive fans to tell the difference between a real track and an AI-generated one.
In the case of Frank Ocean, the scammer told Motherboard that at least one of the tracks is real and that they leaked this initially as a way to build their credibility to then sell their AI fakes successfully; there is essentially no way, outside of verification from Frank Ocean himself, to verify this claim.
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