Lanna Hill: AI-generated Spotify band shows disturbing reality of emerging deepfake content

This week, a new band racked up more than a million streams on Spotify — except the band didn’t exist.

It was revealed that a group of producers used generative AI to create two full albums, complete with fake bios, synthetic vocals, and songs that sounded convincingly real. The tracks were uploaded anonymously, with no disclaimer about their origin. No human artists were credited. And at first, no one noticed.

We’ve spent the past few years panicking about deepfakes in politics or the rise of fake news. But there’s something uniquely disorienting and deeply disturbing about AI infiltrating art, because it’s not just something we consume. It’s something we feel. And it’s supposed to come from somewhere human.

Oxford’s definition of art is “the expression or application of human creative skill and imagination.” It’s collective, but it’s also deeply personal for so many, including me. After my children and immediate family, music is the thing I love the most in the world. It has, and continues to have, a profound impact on me, regularly. And we must protect it.

Research shows that music activates almost every region of the brain, particularly the limbic system, which is responsible for controlling emotions. It releases dopamine, synchronises brain activity between people, regulates heart rate and cortisol, and even helps build empathy.

A 2011 study found that the brain anticipates and rewards emotionally resonant music, especially when it includes surprise, tension, and release. Things that speak deeply to the human experience. And while the AI gets close, it (fortunately) doesn’t get close enough.

Neurological and physiological evidence shows AI-generated tracks often demand more cognitive processing and trigger arousal, but feel less emotionally familiar and meaningful. Research also confirms that human-composed music consistently scores higher in terms of emotional depth and memorability.

The Spotify incident is more than just a technological or copyright issue. It’s an existential one. If our brains and bodies respond differently to human expression, and we allow mimicry to take its place, we’re not evolving — we’re eroding. Some things simply must remain untouched by automation. Not because we’re afraid of progress, but because meaning itself depends on it. Music, language, writing, dance — art in its many forms is the scaffolding of everything we share. Remove them, and we don’t just lose connection. We lose the point.

In Australia, nearly two-thirds of people under 35 use Spotify as their primary music platform. This isn’t a fringe experiment. It’s the mainstream. And platforms like Spotify aren’t built to distinguish meaning from mimicry. The AI band’s tracks weren’t taken down until after music insiders flagged them. Listeners streamed them in the millions, without question. And maybe that’s the part that should concern us most. Not just that it happened. But that we still aren’t thinking far enough ahead to stop these things from happening.

Some governments are starting to act. Last month, Denmark’s Culture Minister announced proposed reforms to the country’s copyright laws, aiming to give citizens ownership of their own likeness and voice, not just for legal protection against deepfake abuse, but to defend what’s fundamentally human. A staggering, yet increasingly urgent, reality.

Because this isn’t just about music. It’s about memory, identity, expression and the stories and signals that remind us we’re living through love, pain, fear and joy. If we stop asking who or what made the art that moves us, we won’t just forget what’s real — we’ll forget why it ever mattered.

Lanna Hill is the founder and director of Leverage Media Group