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Treblo's detector flags Fenix Flexin's "Rubberz" as AI-made

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Treblo's detector flags Fenix Flexin's "Rubberz" as AI-made

Fenix Flexin's synth-pop track "Rubberz," released June 5, sits at No. 58 on the Billboard Hot 100 and has racked up 7 million views on its music video. The song was an odd fit for Flexin, who debuted with the rap group Shoreline Mafia in the late 2010s and built a reputation on a nasally, congested delivery; on "Rubberz" his voice sounds brighter, crisper, and filtered through a fake UK accent, which drew suspicion from fans as soon as it dropped. Flexin and his credited producer, Purps on the Beat, denied using AI throughout the summer. Flexin told Channel 5 he had "freestyled" the lyrics and wrote in comments that the only difference from his usual recording process was "auto-tune reverb" and the fake accent. No established AI-music detector had flagged the song, so the accusation stayed unresolved for months.

That changed when independent producer Medasin posted a video laying out how he believed Flexin made the track. Medasin traced the AI music app Treblo, which was called Sonauto until two days before "Rubberz" came out, to an old Flexin Instagram Story teasing his new '80s sound; a zoomed-in freeze-frame of the clip showed a filename with the suffix "Sonauto.mp3." Medasin then prompted Treblo with tags like "80s synthwave" and a request for "rapper lifestyle" lyrics and got back a song with strikingly similar lines: his generated "Diamond chains hanging heavy" echoed "Rubberz"'s "Now I bought a heavy diamond chain," and both songs independently produced lines about "pockets thick" and "plastic smiles." A WIRED reporter repeated the experiment and got a couplet, "Rings on every finger / Leather seats and cedar scent linger," that closely mirrored "Rubberz"'s "Gold rings on my fingers / Still your perfume lingers"; the reporter found any combination of an "80s" tag with a rap-lyrics prompt produced similar results.

Hours after Medasin's video spread, Flexin posted what he said was the original project file for "Rubberz" as proof it was made in a studio. Producers in the comments said the file looked like an existing song run through a "stem separator" to fake individual tracks like bass and drums, which would point to AI origin rather than disprove it. Flexin deleted the post later that day; neither he nor Purps on the Beat addressed it again, and both ignored WIRED's requests for comment. Two days later, on a Saturday, Medasin posted a second video accusing Flexin's labelmate Tyga of also using Treblo for his new $TARFACE project, based on the two artists' public appearances together, their shared label, a similar rap-to-'80s pivot, and a Tyga track that a friend's AI detector had flagged.

Treblo itself then weighed in. Cofounder Ryan Tremblay told WIRED the company had not previously spoken with Flexin or Tyga and was not even aware "Rubberz" existed until it hit the Hot 100, adding: "Someone appears to have used our model to find a sound that millions of people connected with, and that's exciting." Late that Sunday, Treblo published a page called "Was This Made With Treblo?," a public detector the company says is tuned to catch songs made with Treblo with little to no modification and carries a false-positive rate under one in 10,000. Feeding it "Rubberz" returns "Very likely Treblo"; a Tyga track from early July returns the lower-confidence "Likely Treblo." The detector's accuracy has not been independently reviewed, though Treblo has open-sourced its code. Tyga's label did not respond to WIRED's request for comment.

The episode lands alongside a wave of platforms building AI-detection features: LinkedIn rolled out a "seems like AI" flagging button the same day as Medasin's first video, Substack recently added AI-newsletter detection, Tidal has blocked monetization of AI-generated music, and Spotify hosts a crowdsourced AI-tracking list, while a bipartisan AI Labeling Act pending in the US Senate would require platforms to visibly label AI-generated content. In the comments under Medasin's videos, many fans said they liked "Rubberz" regardless of how it was made. Medasin says he understands the appeal, calling the song "catchy" and admitting it was stuck in his head "for a fucking month," but argues artists owe listeners honesty about how their music was made rather than profiting off a deception he calls unethical "on a very spiritual level."

Key facts

  • "Rubberz," released June 5 by Fenix Flexin, sits at No. 58 on the Billboard Hot 100 with 7 million views on its music video.
  • Producer Medasin traced the track to the AI app Treblo, renamed from Sonauto two days before release, via a filename spotted in one of his old Instagram Stories, then reproduced near-identical lyrics by prompting Treblo with "80s synthwave" tags.
  • Treblo's new public detector, "Was This Made With Treblo?," flags "Rubberz" as "Very likely Treblo" and a Tyga track from early July as "Likely Treblo," with a claimed false-positive rate under one in 10,000.
  • Fenix Flexin posted an alleged original project file to disprove the AI claim, but producers said it looked like a stem-separated version of an existing track, and he deleted the post without explanation.
  • The story coincides with LinkedIn, Substack, Tidal and Spotify all rolling out AI-content flags, alongside a bipartisan AI Labeling Act pending in the US Senate.

Why it matters

AI-generated music has now charted on the Billboard Hot 100 for months without being caught by any established AI-music detector, and it took a rival producer's investigation plus the generating company's own new tool to settle the question. It is a live test case for how music authenticity gets adjudicated once the tools that make fakes also start selling detectors for them.

Who it affects

Fenix Flexin, his producer Purps on the Beat, and labelmate Tyga face public doubt over "Rubberz" and the $TARFACE project; independent producer Medasin triggered the investigation; Treblo, the AI music app at the center of it, now has to manage a detector that implicates its own users; and streaming platforms and lawmakers weighing AI-labeling rules gain a concrete example of the problem they are trying to regulate.

How to use it

Treblo's detector is live as a public page called "Was This Made With Treblo?" that anyone can run a track through, and the company has released the underlying code under an open source license so it can be inspected directly rather than taken on faith.

How solid is it

The case rests on several independent threads pointing the same way: a name change from Sonauto to Treblo two days before "Rubberz" dropped, a filename spotted in an old Instagram Story, two separate people (Medasin and a WIRED reporter) independently reproducing near-identical lyrics and sound by prompting Treblo the same way, and Treblo's own detector returning "Very likely Treblo" for the song. But no outside technical audit confirms the detector's accuracy, only Treblo's self-reported false-positive rate, and neither Fenix Flexin, Purps on the Beat, nor Tyga's label has confirmed or denied anything since the detector results came out.

Risks and caveats

Nobody has independently verified Treblo's detector, which is grading the output of its own model; Flexin's deleted "original project file" post was never explained, so it proves nothing either way; and the whole dispute shows how easily an artist's account of their own process can go unchallenged for months until an outside party happens to reverse-engineer it.

“Someone appears to have used our model to find a sound that millions of people connected with, and that's exciting.”

— Ryan Tremblay, Treblo cofounder