• ANGEL JIMENEZ DE LUIS

    Atlanta

Updated Saturday,13May2023-12:34

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  • 'Heart on my sleeve' A rap made by artificial intelligence traces the voices of Drake and The Weeknd and causes panic in the music
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  • Literature Artificial intelligence can be the writer's best friend

The song that no one on the internet can stop talking about these days is Heart on My Sleeve, a collaboration between Drake and The Weeknd that is practically impossible to find on the usual channels. Spotify does not have it in its catalog, Youtube does not allow it to accompany any video and the main social networks systematically block any user who tries to share it at the request of Universal Music Group, the label of both singers. The reason is that the song never existed as a physical fact. Drake and The Weeknd have not collaborated to create a track, although anyone who listens to Heart on My Sleeve can be forgiven if they think they have. It sounds just like you'd expect from a collaboration between these two geniuses but it's actually a creation of Ghostwriter977 using artificial intelligence.

The phenomenon has triggered all the alarms among the record industry, which for months has been waiting for the increase of this type of digital creations. They are songs with the voices of Jay-Z, Bad Bunny or Eminem but that have never really been recorded. Until now, none had achieved the viral impact of Heart on My Sleeve but they knew perfectly well that it was a matter of time. In this age of affordable AI tools, anyone with a little patience and dedication can make a song with all the ingredients needed to succeed, even the voices of their favorite singers.

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VOICE BY AI

The secret is in a program available for a few months and unpronounceable name, SoVitsSvc, which does with the voice something similar to what the famous deepfakes do with the faces of the actors in the videos. Starting from a vocal track, you can create another by imitating the style of any artist. It can be the voice of Drake and The Weeknd, as in this case, or Frank Sinatra, or Taylor Swift, or Kurt Cobain.

It is only necessary to train the system from the voice tracks of the artist you want. These tracks can be obtained from any song already published using a ripping application that isolates the rest of the instruments. There are many available and they are easy to use, almost automatic.

SoVitsSvc does the rest, which is no small thing. It is a free, open source tool that can run on a computer with medium performance, but even if someone does not have the technical inclination or resources to train and use the tool, there are automated versions in several Discord groups or websites that have already trained some of the best known voices in the history of music. An example is Superdub.co.

The technique has already been used on several occasions. Breezer is a British group that two years ago released an album with a style clearly influenced by Oasis, but did not have much travel. Bobby Geraghty, the group's singer, discovered SoVitsSvc and decided to use Liam Gallagher's voice over Breezer's songs. The result is AISIS, an album available on Youtube that sounds like a lost recording that Oasis would have made in the 90s. In February of this year, DJ David Guetta also used a similar tool to add voice tracks that looked like they were recorded by Eminem at one of his live performances. Guetta confessed on Twitter that training the system was extremely simple. It only took me a few hours," he said.

A LOT OF WORK

This is where Heart on My Sleeve loses its miraculous aura. By stating that the song was made with artificial intelligence it is easy to think that Ghostwriter977 simply went to a tool similar to ChatGPT and asked for "a hiphop song with the voices of Drake and The Weeknd". AI magic would have done the rest.

The reality is much more complex. Although SoVitsSvc can create the vocal tracks, Ghostwriter977 has created the rest of the song in the traditional way. It is likely that you are a music producer or someone who works in the sector and knows in depth the necessary editing tools and the usual style of the producers of The Weeknd and Drake.

There are generative artificial intelligences that are capable of creating songs from text descriptions, but, as with video, the results are still unconvincing. To achieve a success like Heart on My Sleeve you have to follow a process not very different from what would be followed if Drake and The Weeknd decided to join their talent.

It's the reason why most songs with AI-generated vocals that have emerged in recent months thanks to SoVitsSvc are versions of songs that already exist. Kanye West singing Poker Face or Michael Jackson singing Get Lucky. The results are better when the vocal register of the person who sings the original and the artist who wants to imitate are similar, but the AI does a pretty good job adapting any voice.

The technique, however, opens a complex debate about copyright and the possibility of commercially exploiting these creations. David Guetta was blunt "I wouldn't think of releasing this commercially," he said of his performance with Eminem's voice. Singer Grimes has recently announced that she will allow anyone to use their voice in musical projects, but asking for 50% of the royalties in return, the same as with any other collaboration.

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