This is an episode of Inside the Tent, a podcast going behind the scenes of Campside’s award winning shows.
Listen on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube or wherever you get your podcasts.
We are living in a golden age of deception. It feels like everyone has an angle and that, everywhere you turn, someone’s trying to scam you.
Chameleon is a weekly show hosted by veteran journalist and Campside co-founder Josh Dean. It takes you inside the incredible, stranger-than-fiction stories about people pretending to be something they aren’t.
And today, hear about the band that’s not quite human, not quite machine: The Velvet Sundown.
They were a hot new band and storming up the charts. But something seemed off. Was this the work of AI? When someone behind the band came out denying it, this looked like mystery solved. But this was only the beginning of an internet hoax with many layers.
Here’s more from Josh:
The episode is set last summer (2025), a long time ago in AI time. Even then, there were many people questioning whether AI could fool us into believing it was real. AI music, for better or worse, almost definitely worse, is now ubiquitous.
As a kind of proof of concept, part of our investigation, and a fun easter egg, we asked AI to go to town and come up with a version of our theme (originally created by two brilliant, real-life musicians, Mark McAdams and Yi-Wen Lai-Tremewan) as if written and performed by the band featured in this episode.
The AI take on Chameleon’s theme music:
And then we went further and asked it to make tracks about other episodes in this season of Chameleon. Check them out here.
Chameleon is a production of Campside Media and Audiochuck. Listen to Inside the Tent on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube or wherever you get your podcasts.
Email us with questions or comments: questions@campsidemedia.com.
We hope to see you inside the tent again soon. Subscribe now for updates on all of Campside’s hit shows.
