A new report by Goldman Sachs claims that the presence of AI will pose a threat to 300 million jobs worldwide, with education, and computer and mathematical roles most likely to be complemented with AI. But what about music? Surely AI can’t fully clone unique the voices of famous singers? Not quite.
Several mainstream artists like Kanye West have found their vocals plugged into AI systems, singing songs they’ve never covered. Here are four most popular – and frighteningly realistic – examples.
1. Kanye West
Kanye West is no stranger to controversy, and any internet stunt with West’s name involved is highly likely to attract attention. Roberto Nickson, the founder of AI company Eluna AI, recorded a verse in the style of Kanye and had a trained AI model of the rapper replace his own vocals.
“That Yeezy track goes hard. He might win a grammy for that,” Nickson said.
Nickson goes on to say in the video: “This is the worst that AI can be in just a few years… every popular musician will have multiple trained models of them… you’re going to be listening to songs by your favourite artists that are completely indistinguishable.”
Reactions to the AI track on Twitter were mixed. Musician Chika commented that the experiment is “so incredibly fucked up in a world where artists are already fighting algorithms, labels, and politicians to be seen.”
“Amazing.” replied NBA writer Kevin O’Connor.
2. Eminem
The legendary rapper’s vocals made a guest appearance at a show in February this year, thanks to David Guetta.
The DJ shared a video of him playing the untitled AI-generated track, made by Guetta himself, on Twitter: “Let me introduce you to… Emin-AI-Em ?” Guetta said.
Guetta added that he won’t release the track commercially, but the move had already attracted some criticism from his followers for using Eminem’s vocals without permission.
“If you’re playing it at a festival that you’re getting paid to play at, I believe the correct thing to do would’ve been to get Eminem’s permission to use his likeness, since you’re technically getting paid to rip his voice,” musician The Kiffness responded.
“If I was Eminem I’d be pissed,” writer Kim McCauley replied.
3. Ariana Grande singing “Diamonds”
Pop princess Ariana Grande has had her vocals modified by AI to sing Rihanna’s hit track “Diamonds”, which appears to have been made way back in 2021. However, that didn’t stop Grande’s fans from resharing and the song went viral on Twitter this past January:
A fan even shared an edited music video to accompany the song, which received mixed responses from Grande’s fanbase:
“This is very cringe,” a fan replied.
4. Drake singing K-pop
Drake may not know how to speak Korean, but through the magic of AI, he now can.
It’s unclear who the original creator of ‘K-pop in the style of Drake’ is. However the AI-generated track was first shared by a TikTok user named Bondolive in early January. The TikTok edit of AI Drake has since clocked over 2.3 million views on the platform.
The original upload currently has 65 million views on YouTube, and TikTok videos containing AI K-pop Drake aren’t doing too bad either: over 5,400 short videos have been made referencing the track so far, with combined views of over seven million.
