Because God created humans to worship, music is inescapably a form of worship, for better or worse. Ultimately, real people should be creating music because people were created to worship with music. As the psalmist sang, “My lips will shout for joy, when I sing praises to you; my soul also, which you have redeemed.”

According to a recent article in The Atlantic, there’s a new hit band that doesn’t really exist. Velvet Sundown got one million hits on Spotify before the wider public realized they were completely AI-generated. Manufactured musical acts are nothing new, but at least boy bands and The Monkees were made up of dancing, singing, living humans.

Velvet Sundown’s two albums have a coffee house vibe. Band photos, history, and song lyrics can all be found online for this group that doesn’t exist. Apparently, they also have a social media strategy. When my colleague Tim Padgett shared the Atlantic article online, the band “liked” his post. One of their own social media posts reads, “They said we’re not real. Maybe you aren’t either.”

Could there be a better encapsulation of our moment than this? Disembodied art. Music without a musician. Will anyone care as long as they like it?

The 1999 film “The Matrix” is a dystopian tale of an ordinary man who discovers his entire world is an illusion manufactured by artificially intelligent robots. Part of the story is that humans are easily captive because of their addiction to ease and escape.

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