Counterparts frontman Brendan Murphy has called out a band he suspects of being AI-generated.
It comes after a metalcore band called Broken Avenue reached nearly 130,000 monthly listeners on Spotify, where they are listed as a “verified artist”.
However, fans of Counterparts, as well as other metal bands, such as Knocked Loose and the Devil Wears Prada, have noted similarities between Broken Avenue’s music and artwork and those of the aforementioned bands.
The majority of tracks on the Broken Avenue profile have also been uploaded in the past six weeks, raising further suspicion that the artist is AI-generated.
All songs credit James Tolby as composer and lyricist, except one 2011 EP that lists Santana Marsh as the composer, per Stereogum.
Now, Counterparts frontman Murphy has joined those questioning the band. Taking to X, he shared an image of their songwriter credits, writing: “$100 to anyone who can get me the legit contact info for James Trolby I won’t do anything fucking crazy you won’t get in trouble.”
$100 to anyone who can get me the legit contact info for James Trolby I won’t do anything fucking crazy you won’t get in trouble https://t.co/5cKDH7A1Sn pic.twitter.com/tOReNdYSrr
— brendan murphy (@brendan905) December 31, 2025
A similar story made headlines back in October, when Cardiff rock group Holding Absence hit out at an AI ‘band’ who had overtaken their streaming figures on Spotify.
Meanwhile, Jorja Smith’s record label recently hit out at a song made using AI, which it alleges “cloned” her voice.
The use of AI in music has been a topic that has been widely debated over the past couple of years, and is criticised by many artists. In February last year, Kate Bush, Damon Albarn, Paul McCartney, Annie Lennox and over 1,000 artists released a silent album in protest against AI being used in music and changes to copyright AI laws planned by the UK government.
At the end of 2024, a study shared the stark warning that people working in music were likely to lose a quarter of their income to AI over the next four years, and, early this year, streaming platform Deezer stated that around 10,000 AI-generated tracks were submitted to the platform daily – making up around 10 per cent of all its music uploads.
In May, McCartney, Elton John, Coldplay, Dua Lipa, Florence Welch, Kate Bush and Robbie Williams were among the 400 artists to sign a letter, asking for Keir Starmer to back proposals that would protect copyrighted artistic works from AI infringement.
Other artists also pushed for the PM to protect the work of creatives ahead of a UK-US tech deal laid out during Donald Trump’s visit in September.
In that same month, Spotify confirmed that it was cracking down on AI by removing 75million “spammy tracks” and targeting impersonators. More recent figures showed that 97 per cent of people “can’t tell the difference” between real and AI music.
Earlier this year, an AI-generated ‘band’ called The Velvet Sundown made headlines after gaining around 400,000 monthly Spotify listeners – despite existing for less than a month. A ‘spokesperson’ for the viral act later admitted that he was running a hoax aimed at “the media”.
More recently, AI-generated artist Xania Monet made headlines for signing a multimillion-dollar record deal and becoming the first AI artist to chart on the US Billboard rankings.
