Among the extensive list of jobs that people think will eventually be replaced by robots, rappers are not usually a part of the discussion. Not only is rapping not the most essential to society; artistic creation is usually reserved for humans. One 17 year old kid in rural Virginia is changing that expectation.
Thanks to some thorough reporting by Quartz, we know that Robbie Barrat built his AI emcee based on a bet at school. Using open source neural networks and feeding them over 6,000 Kanye West lyrics, Barrat was able to build an AI that took those lyrics and rearranged them into new rhymes. The result, while a big robotic and nonsensical, is undeniably rhyming and no less on beat than your average struggle rapper.
Barrett even had the program transcribe the lyrics so we can get a good look at them. Although sometimes they make no sense, there are a few bars that could easily pass in an average song, like “I’ve been waiting on this rocket, Yao Ming / I don’t drink the drama that your dude bring / Kanye West is the making of a romantic / play strings for the World’s game, this is tragic.”
“I don’t know if you can call teaching a neural network to make rap songs artistic,” Robbie Barrat said. “But I like to think that you can.” What do y’all think of this robotic rapper?
