Colorado rock band fighting to shut down AI copycat, denied trademark request

"We're a rock 'n' roll band," said Velvet Daydream singer and guitarist Ryder King. "We like making rock 'n' roll music. We take a lot of pride in kind of doing our own thing with it."

Velvet Daydream is a Colorado band through and through.

"I met our drummer in kindergarten," said King. "We've all been playing all the way throughout high school. We're passionate and we love doing it."

And they're making a name for themselves. But so is The Velvet Daydream.

"We got a DM from a fan who sent us this profile and was like, Hey, there's this AI band with your name," said King.

Velvet Daydream says the similarly titled band and its music is created by artificial intelligence and is even a verified artist on Spotify.

"All you to do is put in a prompt, I want my song to sort of sound like this with these sorts of lyrics, and it'll make you an album in 5 minutes," said King. "You know, these AI groups are dropping entire albums almost every month, every few weeks, and it's just completely undermining the effort that it takes real artists."

"This is our livelihood, this is our career path," fellow singer and guitarist Kaeden Keys said. "I don't have another job that I go to, this is it. And another band can just pop up with our name somewhere that didn't even write any of their music."

The issue moreso is that it's creating confusion. People don't know who the human Velvet Daydream is.

"I was downtown, and I told someone about the band, and they thought we were an AI group, like, oh, you're a real band," said Keys. "And that's happened several times. We've gone to play shows where the promoter will add the AI version of their music over our promo stuff."

"Our first album is The Velvet Daydream, too," Keys added. "All of our social media is The Velvet Daydream."

The band is getting ready to release a new album in March and has officially applied to trademark both The Velvet Daydream and Velvet Daydream in hopes of shutting down the AI dupe before the launch.

"We're just trying to do what we can to make sure it doesn't happen to anyone else, and doesn't keep happening to us," said Keys.

Over the weekend, Velvet Daydream told CBS Colorado both of their applications for trademarks were denied.

"Our next step is figuring out why we didn't get them, and likely appealing their decision," said King.