Last month, approximately nine songs purported to be unreleased Frank Ocean cuts circulated among his fan communities, mainly on Discord, selling for thousands of dollars, collectively.
But a new report by Motherboard’s Joseph Cox reveals that the songs were created using AI tools. Cox interviewed the scammer, who goes by mourningassasin, and told him they hired a musician to create the fake leaks using a generative model trained on “very high-quality vocal snippets.” When he posted a snippet of one of these tracks to a leaked music forum, the feedback was overwhelming.
Mourningassasin told Motherboard they were contacted about the clip by multiple interested parties shortly thereafter, including two buyers who offered to “pay big money” for the collection.
In total, mourningassasin claims they made about 13,000 Canadian dollars (roughly 9,600 USD) from selling the automated tunes.
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