Coming up today on Mini Tech Scrolls, a Sydney based musician
calls out an AI performer and who booked them, how Calci and
Spotify are rigging the charts and a gay dating app using AI
men to lure in users. Hey everyone and welcome to Mini
Scroll. The daily Internet culture
podcast bring you the biggest stories from social media, the
creator economy and the digital space every Monday through
Thursday and sometimes Fridays. My name is Annabelle and I'm
your Wednesday Mini Tech Scroll host and also the deputy editor
of Australian Youth Digital media brand Centennial World.
Welcome back to Minitex Girl for another Wednesday.
Before we get into the stories this week, I feel like I have to
note, I don't know if it sounds like it, but to me it sounds
like I'm losing my voice. So I'm really sorry if I sound a
little bit croaky throughout this episode.
I do have some tea sitting next to me and I'm not even a tea
drinker, but we do what we got to do.
And to be honest, it probably didn't help that on my way in
today, I was singing along to Ariana Grande's probably loudest
album, Dangerous Woman. So I may have made things worse.
But yes, other than that, Please remember to rate, review, and
subscribe all of the things. It's all super helpful,
especially as we're testing a new thumbnail and title
structure. So also feel free to let us know
what you think of that. OK, let's get into the content
for this week. So the first story I have today
is actually a Local 1 and I do really enjoy covering more local
stories every once in a while because I don't know if it's
something that you guys who are not based in Sydney may have
heard of. So for our first story today, a
Sydney artist has taken to social media to reveal that
their band was booked to play alongside an AI artist.
Like I said, this is a little bit of a niche one, but I do
also think it's quite important to cover these stories,
especially when it comes to AI because it's showing how AI is
changing slash impacting industries at the local level
and obviously in this instance, it is the creative space.
Anyway, Last week, a musician named Aiden took to Instagram to
share a recent experience he had playing a gig.
So he performed alongside his band at a local venue in Newtown
called Bootleggers for an event called Mixed Bag.
The purpose of the Mixed Bag event series is to platform and
highlight emerging local artists which which is obviously very
important and this event is booked by a Marrickville based
music Services Agency. Good Intent and for a little bit
more context on Mixed Bag, attendees do have to pay and it
costs about 20 AUD each. So the key players in this story
are Aiden Bootleggers, which is the venue, and Good Intent which
did the booking ahead of this episode.
I did contact Aiden and Good Intent for comment.
Aiden did get back to us in time for our deadline, but Good
Intent did not. So in Aiden's Instagram video,
he alleged that the artist that played before him was AI
generated or was producing AI generated music.
He said he was only aware of this when a member of another
band on the lineup had actually looked through the Instagram of
this artist and then informed them about it.
As for how Aiden felt when he realized that there was an AI
artist on line up, he says that he was quote shocked and
confused at first, not only at how that was allowed to happen,
but also at how that would actually work in a live setting.
When I thought about it more, the confusion turned into
concern at the direction the live music scene is headed in.
I do think Aiden's initial reaction is definitely something
we can all relate to because when I first saw this video, one
of my first questions was how does an AI artist even work in a
live setting? And Aiden does go on to clarify
what he means by an AI generated artist.
In the video, he claims that the social media presence of this
artist seemed to be dominated by AI visuals and what he believed
to be AI generated music over top of it.
And it seems that the way this artist performed was that there
was indeed a human on the stage and they were singing over the
top of what seems to be AI generated music.
But let's listen to Aidan's video from Instagram.
Last night I played a gig at Bootleggers in Newtown, Sydney
and the artist that played before us was AI generated.
Our band was playing as part of 1 of Bootleggers mixed bag
events, the line UPS of which are put together by the agency.
Good intent. The artists do not have control
over the line up. At no point was it disclosed to
us that we would be playing with an AI artist.
As a musician it is a complete insult to be put on a line up
with someone who uses technology that can only exist because of
the large scale theft of the work of my other fellow human
musicians. I don't know if Good Intent was
aware that this was an AI generated artist when they
booked them. If they weren't then whoever is
looking for them needs to do a little bit more research as I
mean just look at the account. It's fairly obvious what's going
on here. As streaming platforms become
increasingly inundated with AI slop, live music must be
defended as an Ave. for human creative expression.
There is no place for generative AI slop in the live music scene.
The appeal of live performance is that it is raw.
It is passionate in that it is human.
AI music delivers none of this, while robbing the opportunity to
do so from genuinely talented human musicians who can.
As this becomes more commonplace, venues are going to
need to work harder to protect the very human artists that have
kept patrons coming through their doors before the scene
that keeps them alive dies off entirely.
So this video currently has over 350 K views and over 22 K likes.
The comments are all super, super supportive and I'm sure
that was a really reassuring for Aiden because he told us that
his decision to speak about it publicly was because he felt,
quote, that if it wasn't spoke about, it could easily slip
through the cracks again. So he has definitely brought
significant awareness to this issue.
And I did also ask him if this kind of thing is something he is
seeing more and more in the live music space as a musician, or
whether this was like an isolated incident.
And in response to that, he said that he hopes it's an isolated
incident quote. But if it's not addressed at an
early age, it could easily become a bigger issue with live
musicians finding it increasingly hard to compete
with cheaper AI options. And I think that is definitely a
valid concern. Now, as you probably had in
Aiden's video, he didn't name the AI artist.
And I'm going to follow his lead here because I don't really want
to give traction to this artist necessarily.
But I did go have a look at this artist Instagram profile because
obviously I was curious and it definitely does seem to
incorporate some kind of AI to promote the performance at
bootleggers. The artist said a promotional
poster which read quote one human 2 robots pop music.
So with that it's very clear that the music is generated with
AI to some degree. In fact this was confirmed by
the Sydney Morning Herald and I'm going to presume that this
person is most likely making this AI generated music through
SUNO, but there is no confirmation of that on the
artist profile. According to the bio of this
artist, they are a Sydney based Afro pop band made-up of 3/2 of
which are avatars and one is the lyricist and producer and it
said in live performances the lyricist is the one who performs
the band's songs on stage and he adds his vocals to the avatars
voices. They say that down the line they
will have more performers added to this rotation and it's
unclear if that means AI quote UN quote performers or human
performers. So from my description of this
artist's Instagram profile, I think I can say that it's fairly
obvious that this artist is AI. So with that in mind, I think a
lot of people were worried about the fact that the booking agency
didn't seem to care or they were just unaware of it.
And this, of course, along with Aiden's video gaining traction,
prompted bootleggers and Good Intent to post a shared
statement to Instagram. The statement was written from
the perspective of Rob Carroll, who is the founder and director
at Good Intent. And I'll read you part of the
statement now quote, I'll take full responsibility.
I didn't look at this particular artist's social and their
representatives. Communications used word
inconsistent with genuine artists.
Their representative described them to us as a producer who
used live vocals in their sets. This person was booked through
an agency who presented themselves as professional.
I hadn't seen them live, but now looking at their socials, their
content is clearly and blatantly AI.
Good Intent and bootleggers have never knowingly and will never
book people who use AI to generate music.
For those who don't know us. Good Intent is passionate about
supporting and doing the right thing by real artists.
We'll ensure we review our vetting processes moving
forward. We'd never want to be placed in
this position where we're encouraging the use of AI and
financially supporting the theft from artists on which AI is
trained to put our money where our mouth is.
Bootleggers and Good Intent will also make a donation to Support
ACT. So the response to this
statement has been quite positive, with many social media
users and Sydneysiders appreciative that Good Intent
took accountability. And honestly, this statement
could be used as a blueprint for brands slash companies to
address AI usage or I guess platforming AI when it's not
something that they intended to do.
It felt quite honest in that they like readily took
responsibility for what went down.
When I read this statement, my first thought was actually how
different this was to huff his response to their alleged AI
use. Granted, this is a different
situation, but I thought it was an interesting comparison of how
one company immediately admitted to wrongdoing and the other did
not and how that impacted how social media users approached
the quote UN quote scandal. In case you missed it, I did
report on the Hoffa situation a couple of weeks ago.
But as a reminder, a New Zealand based model named Elijah accused
Hoffa, which is a New Zealand St. wear brand of using AI
generated models in campaigns. And if you want more detail I
will link the episode where I covered it in the description.
But to make a Long story short, Hoffa really doubled down on the
fact that they did not use AI in the way Elijah was alleging.
And that may be true, but the way they did so was honestly
quite distasteful. Representatives from the brand
went on TV and also ended up insulting slash intimidating
Elijah in the process. It was honestly crazy.
Many people felt like Hoffa was truly ruining their reputation
and it was just kind of like an overall PR disaster for them.
And obviously this was quite a different approach to good
intent. But before I speak about that a
little bit more, there are some updates on the Hoffa situation
that I wanted to quickly note. The most recent update is that
Hoffa commissioned an independent forensic
investigation into the AI allegations.
There is a limited detail about who conducted it though, and I
did go to the link in their bio to try and learn more about this
investigation and AI policy, but the 404 error came up, so I
wasn't able to access that page. But according to the statement
they recently issued, they found quote, no evidence that Hoffa or
the agency acting on our behalf used facial image material to
generate the AI images in question.
It also found no evidence supporting allegations that
Hoffa copied or recreated the likeness of any model using AI.
And at the same time, they also admitted that, quote, aspects of
our public response fell short of the standard we expect of
ourselves. For that we are genuinely sorry
and we've learnt from this experience.
This investigation slash statement came off the back of
another statement that they had made that was posted on June
11th. And it basically said that the
specific imagery in question did quote, generate a new image
using an AI design tool, but the image was not engineered to
resemble any specific person. So they did admit to some level
of AI usage. And now they're kind of going
back on that. And honestly, it has left a lot
of people, including Elijah confused.
Elijah is continuing to call out what seems to be contradictory
messaging in his content. So if anything else significant
drops from that, I will include it in an episode.
But All in all, comparing these two situations from a brand
perspective, it's clear why good intent statement was well
received compared to Hoffa. Like I said, I do think the
Hoffa situation is a little bit harder to prove, but it all just
kind of comes down to consistency and messaging.
Hafiz messaging has not been the same across the board and also
the tone has differed significantly depending on the
medium. And on top of this, they seem to
be quite combative slash defensive when it came to
Elijah's content, whereas good intent welcomed Aiden's video.
And I think that went a long way for how the audience perceived
them. But yeah, I do think there was
just some key differences between the two situations.
But I'd definitely be curious to hear what you guys thought of
these two and whether you think this comparison is even valid.
OK, let's move on to the next story.
And we have more news related to prediction markets, which is,
like I said last week, my special interest at this point.
But honestly, in the way that Lauren had Simone scroll for
every time that she spoke about Club Chalamet on mini scroll, we
need an equivalent for prediction markets.
Like at this point, it's mini prediction market scroll.
But anyway, I wanted to talk about everything that's
happening between Cal, she and Spotify.
So I guess this is quite a music heavy episode now with a Spotify
focus story, but we lean in SoCal.
She and Spotify have come under fire for allegedly altering
music chart. Kaushi basically has these
monthly betting markets on Spotify's top song chart.
And a man named Caleb Davies, who's actually 1 of Kaushi's top
traders, has basically been sounding the alarm that there is
bot powered manipulation going on with Spotify's charts which
ultimately messes with the betting market that's tied to
them. He's been posting all of his
like data slash receipts under a pseudonym on X.
If you want to check that out, I will also link it in the
description, but obviously I will give you a summary because
this story I feel like can be a little bit complicated.
So at the end of June, Caleb was making couple tweets flagging
that there was some weird activity around streaming
numbers in that month's chart market.
He basically claimed that there were weird spikes in streaming
numbers that didn't make sense and seemed manufactured.
But these allegations really ramped up with Malcolm Todd.
If you aren't familiar with Malcolm Todd, he is kind of just
like indie pop alternative R&B guy.
He's also brothers with Audrey Hobart, who has definitely been
gaining traction on TikTok for quite a while now, especially
after Co writing with Gracie Abrams I think it was, and then
also releasing her song Sue Me. But when it comes to Malcolm
Todd, there seemed to be an inauthentic surge with his
streams on his song Earrings. As Caleb explained in a tweet
quote, Malcolm Todd got fast in what also appears to be blatant
fraud with a 70% increase in US streams in a day.
And then he attached a screenshot of Spotify charts
that showed that Earrings had hit a new peak of #1 where it
was previously at #4 on the charts.
In other tweets, he also shared screenshots of charts monitoring
streams. And there definitely did seem to
be some quite dramatic spikes. Fans noted that it could have
been a result of listening parties, but Caleb did push back
on that, showing what the shape of a legit streaming bump would
look like. Say, when there are events like
the Grammys or Coachella where the streams will kind of
gradually build up and then taper off kind of naturally.
According to his daughter, Malcolm Todd's streams did not
look like that at all. It literally just spiked out of
nowhere and then dropped her right back down.
On July 1, he shared a tweet trying to figure out the
likelihood of something like that even happening as he wrote
quote. As we await the final June
Spotify update, one last look at how unlikely yesterday's earring
surge was to have occurred by chance.
Looking at the data set of Sunday to Monday changes, it was
a roughly 1 and 77 octillion chance of happening randomly.
So as you can gather from that, it is pretty unlikely.
Over the course of him tweeting about this, he also said that he
had informed Calci and Spotify about the potential manipulation
and publicly called on Calci to hold trading on the market and
hold off and paying out until someone actually investigated
what was going on. In one tweet, he was theorizing
that there was a Poly market trader inciting songs into
playlist to farm streams. As far as how Cal she initially
responded to Caleb's claims, Cal.
She did end up paying out the winners and Caleb shared that
they actually emailed him about it as well as he wrote in
another tweet. Quote Cal, she did pay out the
market based on fraudulent results right after sending me
an e-mail stating that there are many plausible reasons that
Malcolm Todd's timely surge was not due to artificial boosting
and obviously he pushes back against that.
But here is I guess the twist. Spotify later confirmed to why
that yes, they did find evidence of artificial streaming and this
was the statement that was given to the publication.
Quote, all streaming services face ever changing stream
manipulation. Spotify has best in class
detection and mitigation practices for manipulated
streams, and we don't pay out associated royalties.
A spokesperson for Calci did also say that they're in contact
with Spotify to investigate this issue.
Spotify has since asked Calci to remove the company's logo from
its platform and website, and Calci has ultimately added a
disclaimer ascending that its products quote have not been
endorsed by Spotify. From Spotify's end, they have
ultimately adjusted the charts to account for the discrepancy,
culling over 500 1000 artificial streams which ultimately would
have taken Malcolm Todd's song down to 4th.
In saying that though, many publications have been knowing
that there is no suggestion that Malcolm Todd or his team were
involved in any attempt to boost streams and numbers on Spotify.
It seems like the going theory is that potentially someone who
was betting on Malcolm Todd's song to be #1 paid for, but to
string the song where they would probably get a bigger payout
from their winds on prediction markets as opposed to the cost
they would have to pay for these bots.
And of course, this all comes at a time of rising concern around
the growth of prediction markets like calcium Poly market and the
potential for insider trading, which is something that these
platforms are trying to limit. But of course, when we look at
this from a musician's perspective, it is another layer
of upsetting slash concerning because it's just going to make
it harder and harder for smaller artist to actually chart when
foul play like this is in the mix and is an option.
If the numbers keep being inflated to this degree, it will
become a lot harder for anyone to actually breakthrough in a
meaningful way with limited financial resources and backing
behind them. OK, let's get into our final
story for today. And this was actually a request
from a Spotify comment to cover this new dating app Goose.
I actually did see this on X as well, so thank you very much for
the reminder. There has been a lot of
discussion around this app online thanks to a piece by
Wired that claimed it was a si up meaning psychological
operation. This is typically used in media
or like commentary to describe a phenomenon where there's
manipulation of information or like media or anything like that
to implement emotion or public opinion, that kind of thing.
So right now Goose is an invite only dating slash quote UN quote
lifestyle app for gay men. As the website reads, quote
Goose is the gay app not just for dating me guys through the
life. You already have places,
friends, interest stories and what's happening nearby.
In the piece Why it does go into detail about the marketing
strategy of this app Which? The journalist EJ Dixon claims
involved using AI generated men to get people to join the
platform. In a thread on X, EJ Dixon does
share quite a succinct summary of what she found in her
investigation, so I will definitely link that below.
But she explains that she first found out about Goose through
some friends that had told her that they'd received messages
from quote UN quote random hot guy accounts.
And she notes that these accounts were all new and
conventionally attractive. Quote all the messages used
approximately the same verbiage and all the guys look similar.
They featured similarly aesthetic post.
They also all followed each other and commented on each
other's accounts. Weird.
So I started running guys photos through Google Gemini and other
AI detection software. Most or all of the photos were
apparently generated using Google AI.
So essentially you have these AI generated profiles messaging men
to join the app. It's literally giving those hey
girlie pyramid scheme messages to me.
Anyway, EJ continues by noting that she found more than 20
accounts that followed the same kind of pattern, adding that
they also followed the Goose Co founder, which is another level
of SAS. And to add even more fuel to the
fire, she found that Goose was actually looking to hire quote
UN quote ambassadors who would be able to run Instagram
accounts, seemingly as a part of its marketing.
Using what seems to be fake accounts like this to drive
people to a product is obviously unethical and it's also just not
allowed, but it has left a lot of the gay community upset,
which is totally understandable as EJ continues quote.
It's also pissed off a lot of members of the gay community who
have already criticized the app for a lack of diversity in its
marketing and promoting toxic body image standards.
On one hand, I'm flattered that I'm their target audience. 1
user told me but the need to essentially bake gay guys into
signing up feels really sketchy. I did also have a look into the
sentiment online and I did see one Reddit user on VR slash gay
Reddit share how the app essentially made them spiral.
They said quote. I couldn't even tell what was
real and what was fake anymore. Amongst my Instagram friends.
I had to go through and remove everyone I never met in real
life. I thought this was a problem
that only happened to boomers. No one is immune in the AI era
clearly. And interestingly on the R
technology Reddit I have seen many users also say that other
dating apps do a similar thing. This is not really something
I've ever seen or really heard of online.
I'm definitely curious if this is something that you guys are
familiar with. But as one user recounted quote,
that's basically how dating apps have worked for years.
But before AI, they generated profiles by farming Instagram to
send you a bunch of women who weren't actually using the app.
And there were quite a few comments like that.
So I'm gathering that this is something that happens to men
who are trying to date women. In saying that though, I do
think it is a little bit more harmful or I guess egregious
when it comes to a queer face slash app using AI or fake
accounts in this way. Because this is an example of
the use of AI to capitalize on a marginalized community that has
historically found it hard to build these kind of
relationships or have a safe space to do so.
And it feels especially hypocritical when it is around
an app that is built on the premise of finding relationships
and friendships. Even like I said, the queer
community has historically relied on these spaces out of
necessity, so trust and authenticity really matter here
a lot. And the lack of disclosure that
this account is essentially operating as an ad and is fake
is what definitely pushes this into something quite deceptive
because there is a chance that people can believe they're
talking to a real person. Anyway, I'm definitely curious
to hear what you guys think about this story, especially if
you are someone who has dabbled in the app.
And I'm also curious if this is something you have noticed with
other apps like AI generated accounts sliding into DMS or
trying to get you to download a product or an app.
I do feel like this is becoming increasingly common.
Well, that is everything for mini tech scroll today.
I really hope you guys enjoyed. Lauren will be back for a
regular mini scroll tomorrow and I will be back on the mic next
week, presuming I don't continue to lose my voice.
But thank you so much for listening.
Bye. Centennial World Podcast Network
operates on Gadigal land. We would like to acknowledge the
Gadigal of the Eora Nation, the traditional custodians of this
land, and pay our respects to elders both past and present.