Artificial intelligence in music provoked a lot of discussion, condemnation, but also celebration among the industry. Whether it was fake tracks with other rappers' voices, AI-generated lyrics, or covers of famous songs by deceased legends, it took the world by storm in these past few months. However, let's not forget that AI started making waves in the visual medium before it hit our ears. Moreover, now we have a bit of a combination of those two enterprises to once again bring hip-hop fans a curious thought experiment. Have you ever wondered what Kanye West, Jay-Z, Nicki Minaj, and many more would look like when they're much, much older?
Well, now we might know, as AI artist David Zinyama uploaded various rappers aging (with help from the tech algorithm) on Tuesday (May 23). Other figures he used artificial intelligence to age include Beyoncé, Cardi B, Lil Wayne, Kendrick Lamar, DJ Khaled, J. Cole, and Usher. Presumably, the program generated the renditions based on one or various pictures of them and predicted what the change would look like in an unspecified amount of years. Furthermore, most are hard to believe, a few are pretty spot-on, but all of them are very uncanny. Also, some commenters pointed out that they look more like other people than they do themselves.
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How Will Your Favorite Rappers Age? AI Has A Guess
Still, this wave of debate around AI in art, when compared to that of AI in music, is a different but no less worrisome beast. For example, Will.i.am warned Sirius XM during an interview that these advancements go far beyond just music or art, and that steps must be taken to ensure people's private rights to their image and voice are preserved. "We all have voices, and everyone’s compromised because there are no rights or ownership to your facial math or your voice frequency,” he stated. “So, forget songs. Banks. People calling up your bank pretending to be you. Forget songs. Just family matters and wiring money. You’re getting a FaceTime or a Zoom call and because there’s no intelligence on the call, there’s nothing to authenticate AI call or a person call.
"That’s the urgent thing, protecting our facial math," he continued, "I am my face math, I don’t own that. I own the rights to ‘I Gotta Feeling’, I own the rights to the songs I wrote, but I don’t own the rights to my face or my voice? There’s new laws and new industries about to boof. This time next year you’ll be like, ‘Will.i.am said that on that radio station.' Fact is, these are all new parameters that we’re all trying to navigate around because the technology is that amazing and with amazingness comes regulations and governance that we have yet to implement." Let us know what you think of these renditions and the role of AI in art in the comments down below. In addition, come back to HNHH for the latest bizarre offerings and crossovers in the AI and music world.
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