Scammer sells fake AI Frank Ocean songs

Occurred: May 2023

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A scammer sold fake AI-generated tracks in the name of reclusive US R&B singer Frank Ocean for a total of USD 13,000, resulting in Ocean's fans being ripped off.

 The scammer, who went under the pseudonym @Mourningassassin, offered the songs on Discord and leaked music forums before they were removed. 

Mourningassassin told Vice they had hired a musician to create several fake tracks using a model trained with 'very high quality vocal snippets' of Ocean’s voice. It was also reported that one of the tracks was genuine, which was first leaked in order to build credibility within the Discord community.

Operator: Discord; Soundcloud
Developer: Anonymous/pseudonymous

Country: USA; Global

Sector: Media/entertainment/sports/arts

Purpose: Generate music

Technology: Text-to-music; NLP/text analysis; Neural network; Deep learning; Machine learning
Issue: Copyright; Ethics

Transparency: Governance; Black box; Marketing

Page info
Type: Incident
Published: June 2023