This Week (or So) in Vocal Deepfakes:

Lightly annotated

1. The director of a documentary film uses an AI engine so that his celebrated, deceased subject can speak from beyond the grave: [theverge.com](https://www.theverge.com/2021/7/15/22578707/anthony-bourdain-documentary-deepfake-voice).

2. A musician creates a business built around deepfake technology, letting other musicians engage with her voice: [rollingstone.com](https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-news/holly-herndon-ai-deepfake-tool-1197200/).

3. Bedroom producers make “fan fiction” songs featuring the AI-engineered voices of actual stars: [billboard.com](https://www.billboard.com/articles/columns/hip-hop/9596987/deepfake-music-imitations-history/).

4. Synthetic voices belatedly catch up with CGI, and all-digital animation may be in our near future: [technologyreview.com](https://www.technologyreview.com/2021/07/09/1028140/ai-voice-actors-sound-human/).

Initial vaguely related thoughts:

– All bands start as cover bands.

– There’s a whole culture of nightclub performers, cover bands, and actors having careers (or partial careers) being other people.

– There’s an uncanny valley between John Fogerty being sued for sounding like himself and the verdict against Robin Thicke and Pharrell Williams in the “Blurred Lines” case.

– A lot of the voices of fictional robots and androids in film and television are the voices of humans (see: *2001: A Space Odyssey*, *WarGames*, *Max Headroom*, *Colossus: The Forbin Project*, and so on).

– The future is especially meaningful when viewed through the lens of the past.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *