Viral band exposed as AI rockstars

Good morning, AI enthusiasts. A viral band just proved that AI-generated music can thrive on Spotify — so long as no one asks too many questions.

After hitting 500k monthly listeners before being outed as an “art hoax,” Suno-powered band “The Velvet Sundown” could be a case for the long run of music within the AI age… Whether fans know it or not.

In today’s AI rundown:

• AI band hits 500k listeners, admits to Suno use

• Sakana AI teaches models to team up

• Speed up development workflows with Gemini CLI

• Scientists construct an AI that may think like humans

• 4 recent AI tools & 4 job opportunities

LATEST DEVELOPMENTS

AI & MUSIC

🎸 AI band hits 500k listeners, admits to Suno use

The Rundown: A mysterious band that went viral on Spotify with over 500,000 monthly listeners has been revealed as an “art hoax” in an article from Rolling Stone, with music created using the AI generator Suno.

The main points:

• The group’s two albums appeared on streaming platforms in June with zero digital footprint, raising skepticism from Reddit users and musicians.

• Music platform Deezer flagged potential AI usage, but Spotify made no disclosure requirements, allowing the tracks to spread across 30+ playlists.

• The “band” initially said the AI claims are lazy and baseless on social media, with “adjunct member” Andrew Frelon calling it “marketing and trolling.”

• Frelon said Suno was used to create at the very least among the tracks, leveraging its “Persona” feature to keep up a consistent vocal style.

Why it matters: While the music tracks and band identity clearly didn’t pass the human test this time, future models and outputs actually will (and are likely already hiding in plain sight). The query will increasingly turn into whether that matters — or if, like V-tubers, people will eat good content whatever the “real” creator.

TOGETHER WITH RIME

🗣️ AI voices with personality

The Rundown: Rime offers probably the most realistic and expressive AI voices in the marketplace today, creating agentic experiences that sound like on a regular basis people, not robots or voice actors — while driving double digit increases in conversion for brands like Dominos.

Use Rime’s platform to:

• Deliver natural voice AI agents that laugh, breathe, sigh, and sound human

• Easily integrate multilingual text-to-speech (TTS) via API or on-prem

• Start constructing today with a generous free tier

Try Rime’s live chat (or +1-662-727-8948) and begin creating agentic experiences with personality today.

SAKANA AI

🫂 Sakana AI teaches models to team up

The Rundown: Japanese lab Sakana AI just introduced AB-MCTS, a brand new algorithm that lets competing AI models collaborate on complex problems, using their collective intelligence to resolve problems too difficult for any of the person models.

The main points:

• The system combines ChatGPT, Gemini, and DeepSeek using adaptive search, solving 30% of ARC-AGI-2 puzzles versus just 23% for top solo models.

• AB-MCTS dynamically allocates different models based on strengths, with some handling strategy while others excel at code throughout the same problem.

• Researchers discovered models could construct on one another’s mistakes, with one model correcting flawed answers from one other to achieve correct solutions.

• Sakana released the underlying framework as “TreeQuest,” an open-source tool for developers to construct their very own collaborative AI systems.

Why it matters: Sakana’s system aligns with a number of trends within the AI world — from swarms of AI agents to “orchestrators” delegating to probably the most capable model for a certain task. A number of the biggest future breakthroughs might come from a team of AI specialists working together, not only a single powerful model.

AI TRAINING

💻 Speed up development workflows with Gemini CLI

The Rundown: On this tutorial, you’ll learn learn how to use Google’s recent command-line AI tool brings powerful code evaluation, app generation, and workflow automation on to your terminal without spending a dime.

Step-by-step:

1. Open your terminal and write npm install -g @google/gemini-cli (requires Node.js 18+)

2. Sign up together with your Google account for 60 requests/minute, 1,000/day

3. Try gemini “Explain the architecture of this codebase” for fast insights

4. Use for PR evaluation, git conflicts, or generating apps from sketches

Pro tip: Start with easy codebase queries, then progress to complex automation.

PRESENTED BY SALESFORCE

🤖 ReMarkable’s agent-first enterprise vision

The Rundown: reMarkable is scaling fast — and AI agents are helping them do it without burning out the human team. On this session, CTO Nico Cormier shares how they’re using Agentforce to automate customer support and internal IT, giving employees more time for deeper pondering and creativity.

Within the interview, you’ll discover:

• How customer support was transformed by “Mark,” their first agent

• Why internal IT support got faster and simpler with AI agent “Saga” in Slack

• Lessons on balancing AI with a human touch

Click here to learn more and watch the conversation.

AI RESEARCH

🧠 Scientists construct an AI that may think like humans

The Rundown: Researchers from Helmholtz Munich developed an AI model named Centaur, which simulates human decision-making and behavior with extreme accuracy from training on thousands and thousands of selections from psychological experiments.

The main points:

• Researchers fine-tuned Meta’s LLaMA using data from 60k participants across 160 psychology experiments, teaching it to copy human decision patterns.

• The resulting Centaur model accurately predicts human selections and behaviors across a wide selection of tasks, even ones it has never seen before.

• Centaur outperformed 14 traditional cognitive models on 31/32 tasks, with accurate predictions in gambling, memory, and problem-solving scenarios.

• Researchers aim to make use of Centaur as a “virtual laboratory” to check theories and higher grasp cognitive processes behind human thought and mental health.

Why it matters: Centaur’s success suggests human cognition and decision-making could be far more predictable than we thought — meaning ASI-level models might give you the option to simulate scenarios with scary accuracy. It’s also a large research tool, letting scientists run behavioral studies without big budgets or years of recruitment.

QUICK HITS

🛠️ Trending AI Tools

• 🤖 Pangu Pro – Huawei’s recent open-source reasoning model

• 🎨 FreePik – Now featuring unlimited image generation for Premium+ accounts

• 🧠 Perplexity – Recent Max tier with Labs, early access, and advanced support

• 🎨 Higgsfield Soul – Advanced image AI, now with free each day generations

💼 AI Job Opportunities

• 🎨 The Rundown – Designer (Brand & Platform)

• 🖥️ xAI – IT Systems Technician

• 📊 Deepmind – Applied Data Scientist

• 🧬 Meta – Research Scientist Manager, AI

📰 The whole lot else in AI today

Perplexity launched Max, a brand new $200/mo tier giving users unlimited access to its Labs tools, early access to recent products like its Comet browser and advanced models.

OpenAI is expanding its Stargate partnership with Oracle, renting about 4.5 GW of information center capability to power its AI energy needs.

Anthropic is reportedly on pace for $4B in annual revenue, 4x higher than its projections at the beginning of 2025.

Google DeepMind CEO Demis Hassabis hinted at potential “playable world” models coming for its Veo 3 video generation model in a response on X.

Chinese tech giant Huawei open-sourced several of its Pangu models and the underlying reasoning tech, trained using the corporate’s own Ascend chips.

AI startup Lovable is reportedly set to lift a brand new $150M funding round, valuing the vibe-coding platform at near $2B.

COMMUNITY

🎥 Join our next live workshop

Join our next workshop today at 4 PM EST with Dr. Alvaro Cintas, The Rundown’s AI professor. By the tip of the workshop, you’ll confidently wire MCP into each conversational AI and your favorite coding IDEs

RSVP here. Not a member? Join The Rundown University on a 14-day free trial.

See you soon,

Rowan, Joey, Zach, Alvaro, and Jason—The Rundown’s editorial team