2 days ago
- Entertainment
- The Herald Scotland
This extreme metal album blew up one weekend – now it's accused of AI
These examples are out in the open, attached with a clear mission statement, framed by their practitioners as the next step in the future of art creation. But what about when the algorithmic infection begins to worm its way out of the mainstream and into the underground, where screams of authenticity are paramount?
It all began last Friday when an album by Czech black metal artist Draugveil was uploaded to YouTube. Its striking cover art of a young, long-haired knight draped in corpse paint laid upon a bed of roses caught the eyes of many, and its popularity snowballed instantly.
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But something else caught the eyes of some, that the roses seemed a little off. The rose stems protrude from the ground in an unrealistic fashion. So, in line with the times, accusations of AI trickery arrived swiftly and spread fast.
Soon, the music itself was accused of being AI, or outlines of songs fully formed once put through the generative music program SUNO. There's no indication that this is the case, and the music is in line with what one would expect from a one-man black metal project in the vein of Judas Iscariot and Burzum, but then if AI was asked to create music in a black metal style, that is probably what it would decide to generically produce and spit out.
A Reddit thread titled 'Had to leave band because singer was too obsessed with AI art' was also linked to the project, but nothing indicates a connection beyond mere conjecture of how certain details might match up. Alas, it was just another factor for many that deception was afoot in the underground metal community.
The germ of the strange roses became the igniting catalyst for the torrent of accusations, but that itself does not indicate the use of AI. Album covers hardly need to exist in the realm of the real, and it's not out of the ordinary to find details within album art that do not line up with their real-world counterparts. For all we know, the artist was a few roses short of a bed, and the suspicious plants were digitally placed there in image editing software, which is totally standard practice.
On the part of the YouTube channel that gave the album a platform, Black Metal Promotion, they say Draugveil sent them screenshots of the songs in a digital audio workstation. That does not mean there was no AI in play, but then it likely means there was a creator's hand guiding the work at the very least.
But the intensity of the speculation, and the sheer speed of the AI narrative setting in, shows how quick we are to jump the gun in our suspicions of AI as a looming threat waiting around every corner. That's not surprising considering the use of AI in art is bound to get even more complicated, deceptive, and normalised – but it does not help if suddenly every artistic eccentricity is now in the firing line for inauthenticity through an assumption of AI use.
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For many in the discussion, Draugveil's album being a result of AI is an indisputable fact, repeated until it becomes truth. Many say Draugveil needs to clarify with a statement, but that would be the biggest mistake to make. The hype generated by the intense back-and-forth discussions, the mystery of what the reality is, is a more powerful promotion than whatever the truth might come to be. It is reminiscent of the hijinks of 2000s black metal project Velvet Cacoon, which became infamous for mixing in fake albums that never existed and stealing songs from local bands and passing them off as their own, all because the ensuing confusion and outraged bluster would be entertaining for them.
Before, accusations of inauthenticity lay in intentions, but now it is the process that is being questioned. If the threshold for suspicion is this low, we're heading toward a future where artists will have to prove their humanity just to be taken seriously.
Whether Draugveil is a project borne from AI may always be a mystery unless the artist speaks and makes their case, but the prevailing sense is that people want it to be true, for the thrill of catching a fraud in the act and to satisfy any lingering purist paranoia. But if every strange flourish in an album cover or every odd-sounding riff becomes grounds for an AI witch hunt, where does that leave human creativity in the end?
