In recent reports, a scammer walked away with over $10,000 by selling AI-generated Frank Ocean songs. This isn’t the first time that the internet is getting such news, as scammers are now blending in with the new era. Artificial intelligence is taking the world by storm, and some bad actors are now finding new ways to fully utilize its potential fraudulently.
Asides from the Grammy-winning singer and songwriter, Frank Ocean, scammers have also tried this trick on other stars. Sometime last month, Drake and The Weekend made the headlines after an AI-generated hit streaming platform. The song was said to be a new piece from the two singers and gathered over 15 million views on its first upload.
Although the song is no longer on most streaming platforms, it brings to light the abuse of artificial intelligence. Now this rather silly bait has caught up with Frank Ocean as a scammer has made a few bucks off the singer’s name. This trick proved to work effectively on fans expecting an album from Frank Ocean anytime soon.
Details on the AI-generated Frank Ocean songs making the rounds on the internet
It is no longer news that artificial intelligence can now compose music. This was one of the takeaways from the Google I/O event, where Bard AI thrilled the audience with AI-generated music for the event. This feature has been available for quite a while, and some scammers are putting it to use by making fake music attributed to real musicians.
The scammer responsible for the AI-generated Frank Ocean songs goes by the username mourningassasin. They spoke with sources explaining in detail how they were able to pull off this stunt. These individuals relied fully on the power of artificial intelligence and the eagerness of fans wanting to hear something new from Frank Ocean.
Mourningassasin simply hired someone familiar with generative AI to make about nine Frank Ocean songs. These songs borrow some elements from “very high-quality vocal snippets” from one of the singer’s songs. The song in question is “Thinkin Bout You” and it formed the tools which the generative AI model worked with.
Once the generative AI model used was done with the tracks, the scammer then proceeded to share them. To do this, mourningassasin took to a leaked-music forum and was able to convince members of the AI-generated song’s authenticity. Members of the forum then contacted the scammer, offering to pay a huge amount of money for the music. To see people paying over $4,000 per song shows that it was hard to spot the difference between a real Frank Ocean song and an AI-generated Frank Ocean song.