“Your algorithm’s like a breath of spring, your code is soft like summer rain…” These are NOT the lyrics in a new cover of Dolly Parton’s ‘Jolene’, we hasten to add: it’s very faithful to the original.
It’s the work of artist and AI-explorer Holly Herndon, using the Holly+ ‘digital twin’ that she launched in 2021. The vocals were generated by Holly+ although with plenty of humans involved (from the instrumentation to the development of Holly+ herself) this should not be pigeonholed as an ‘AI cover’. It’s more interesting than that.
“I kept the unusual pronunciations and breathing sounds in the mix as a timestamp, although it is clear from many people’s responses that the spawned singing is already largely indistinguishable,” said Herndon.
Elsewhere, Emergent Drums, from a company called Audialab, is the latest AI-powered music-making tool aimed at artists and producers. It’s a $149.99 plugin that generates “endless drum samples, all royalty-free” from scratch.
“Drums are just the beginning,” promised Audialab’s Berkeley Malagon in a post on Product Hunt. “We believe the future of creativity is a deep collaboration with AI tools that augment what creatives can do and introduce new creative verbs…”
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