A video showing how AI can put an approximation of any musician’s voice on any piece of music has gone viral, with some fans predicting that the technology will “disrupt the music industry completely”.
AI expert Roberto Nickson posted the video, which uses Kanye West’s AI-generated voice, on Twitter, saying: “All you have to do is record reference vocals and replace them with a trained model of any musician you like…
“I found this Kanye-style beat on YouTube, I wrote eight bars, I’m gonna record them now and then I’m gonna have AI Kanye replace me.”
After playing the verse, which could be convincing enough to fool many into thinking that it was in fact West rapping, Nickson tells viewers: “That’s crazy, right? And keep in mind, this is the worst that AI will ever be. In just a few years, basically every popular musician will have multiple trained models of them.
He continued by stating that things will move “very, very fast” in this field over the next two years.
“You’re gonna be listening to songs by your favourite artists that are completely indistinguishable. You’re not gonna know whether it’s them or not. I’m just thinking of all the good and the bad that will come out of this.”
The video has been viewed two million times. “This is insane,” wrote one commenter, while another added: “Wow this is going to disrupt the music industry completely.”
“Absolutely astonishing,” wrote a third, while a fourth posted: “This is absolutely mind-blowing. I mean I knew it was possible, but to hear it like this in action, is a whole other ball game. Great work on your end too, bars were fire.”
Nickson’s lyrics included the lines: “I attacked a whole religion all because of my ignorance/ What was I thinking/ That was some b**** s***/ I lost Adidas/ But I’m still Yeezy.”
The words referred to West’s comments about Jewish people and Adidas ending its partnership with him. Read about the artist’s string of recent controversies here.
