A group released a song in which the singer can be heard rapping in a duet with Jay-Z. Only, the voice of the American star was created by artificial intelligence – and that raises a lot of questions.
The song begins normally. Almost nothing, in its description, makes it possible to say that it is about a different piece. Only two discreet hashtags raise awareness: #ai, and #aimusic. Because, yes: despite what you might think, the voice you hear singing in a duet with Alltta is not that of Jay-Z. It was reconstructed by artificial intelligence and the result is particularly impressive.
The video is the work of Franco-American duo Alltta, who composed the music and lyrics, and whose voices can also be heard. Uploaded on March 31, 2023, the video currently has just under 100,000 views – but that number could quickly increase. The song is starting to get talked about, and its use of artificial intelligence inevitably raises many questions.
An impressive imitation
First of all, you have to start by recognizing the quality of the imitation of the rapper’s voice: it really sounds like Jay-Z is singing these verses. Within the editorial staff of Numerama, everyone agrees that the voice generated by the AI is stunning. Bogdan, who handles the Cyberwar section, for example, believes that he could not distinguish » true from false.
He is not the only one. American YouTuber Marques Brownlee, 16.8 million subscribers, posted a video on April 4, 2023 specifically to this song. ” I received an email a few weeks ago from an artist you may know, Mr J.Medeiros, who is part of the Alltta group “, he says in his video. Marques Brownlee explains that they talk about the ” new track they are working on, a collaboration between him and Jay-Z, except Jay-Z’s voice is not real, but generated by artificial intelligence “.
The members of Alltta hesitated: how should they share the song? Should they share it? “ For those who know what Jay-Z’s voice sounds like, that’s nonsense. It sounds so much like Jay-Z, that even knowing that the voice is generated by an artificial intelligence, I could still enjoy the song as if it was really sung by Jay-Z.”
How did they do it?
However, one question remains: how did they manage to reproduce the American rapper’s voice so faithfully? Whether on the Alltta site, on their social networks or on YouTube, there is no information available. Numerama, sent a message to Alltta, but did not receive a response from them at this time.
It is Marques Brownlee who says that, during their exchanges by email, Mr J. Medeiros explained to him that they had started writing the lyrics of the song before the technology was available. “ The tools they used were not yet completely finished, there were always complexities, adjustments to be made, experiments to be done with different methods. Apparently some words were pronounced differently by the AI than in real life. ” But the fact that the end result is so good is what opens Pandora’s box. And it’s almost scary. »
The youtuber is not wrong: voice-generating artificial intelligences are already being used for nefarious purposes by cybercriminals. The latter copy the voices of certain people, and use custom-made recordings to extort money from their relatives. And the technology will get even better over time.
In the case of this song, other questions arise. Has Jay-Z, who is alive and well, given his consent to have his voice modeled by an artificial intelligence and integrated into a song? Who owns the copyright, Alltta, or Jay-Z, so the voice was used indirectly? Can this technology be democratized and sign the end of collaborations between artists? There are currently no answers, and this is partly what makes the arrival of this technology so dizzying.
On Instagram, Alltta’s post sharing the song got a lot of polarized reactions. Some are alarmed, others impressed and excited, still others criticize the band for not notifying more clearly that Jay-Z’s voice had been reproduced by artificial intelligence.
” It’s both awesome and immoral “, writes someone under the video on Instagram. ” Someone is going to use this to exploit celebrity clones. Hackers are always looking for leaks from major artists. What’s stopping them from doing their own Jay-Z/Kendrick/Ye AI, and passing them off as real songs, and making money off of them? asks another. ” The implications are no different than for deepfakes.”
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