Underground Music Collectors Spent Thousands on Fake, AI-Generated Frank Ocean Tracks

An alleged scammer tricked online music collectors into purchasing leaked Frank Ocean tracks that turned out to be fakes, Motherboard first reported.

The songs, which sold for thousands of dollars, weren't written by the popular R&B musician. Instead, they were created with the help of artificial intelligence modeled after Ocean's signature voice and style.

The alleged scammer, who uses the handle "mourningassasin," created roughly nine tracks with a special AI model that trained itself on "very high quality vocal snippets" from Ocean. They then released a small sample from one to attract potential buyers.

The scammer allegedly earned nearly $10,000, charging between $3,000 and $4,000 for each song.

"A high price but not unheard of for Frank Ocean," Gamma, the owner of the Frank Ocean fan Discord, told Motherboard.

Among underground music aficionados, it's common to purchase unreleased tracks from beloved musicians. Discord users will also sometimes chip in to collectively buy and share an unreleased song.

Demand for new music from Ocean has skyrocketed as fans await a follow-up to the Grammy-winning artist's last full-length album, released in 2016.

Last month, Ocean's headlining comeback at Coachella was cut short and a second performance was cancelled altogether due to last-minute production changes and an injury.