I was so bad at art my art teacher thought I was being sarcastic. But I’m not about to use AI. And I did not trust AI to make a pun about 1s and 0s without it actually being good and making it harder to mock the robo-rapper.
Imagine getting a call from someone you respect and they just chew you out. You hear a friend, a personal hero, a family member, just someone you care about saying terrible things about you. Now imagine they’ve been dead for some time. Haunted by a ghost. It sounds like a curse, cast by an evil warlock to haunt their enemies with the derogatory remarks of those long past, but it’s just AI. Perhaps AI is an evil curse? I certainly avoid it like it’s some forbidden magic.
For Kendrick Lamar hearing legendary rappers Tupac Shakur and Snoop Dogg insulting him on a track might have dug just a bit deeper than Drake’s usual diss tracks. However, Drake’s “Taylor Made” diss track wasn’t actually in collaboration with Snoop Dogg or Tupac, the latter having died in the mid 90’s. Tupac’s lawyers, on behalf of his estate, threatened to sue Drake unless he removed the diss track. Drake did pull the track, but not before it spread across the web. Drake’s fans will make sure the track lives forever, including the voice of an AI ghost.
Once your voice is stolen, can you even get it back?
AI Theft is Forever
Drake might not have directly made money from the track, but that wasn’t the point. It was a diss track, part of an ongoing feud between the two rappers. It didn’t need to make money, it just needed to keep the feud going. It certainly did that, with Kendrick Lamar responding with Euphoria yesterday. Now, the AI-voiced track can be found online, even if Drake removed the source. The internet is forever, and so is theft of your voice through AI, it would seem.
The beef between Drake and Kendrick Lamar will one day end. All conflicts do. However, forever there will be a recording that sounds like Snoop Dogg and Tupac Shakur in the wild that isn’t theirs. Unlike Snoop Dogg, Tupac can never speak out for himself. He can never deny the claim that it’s him on that recording. He’s dead, and can’t defend his legacy.
Now, maybe it’s not that big of a deal for this track, but what if it was your loved one? What if someone decided to harass you or one of your loved ones with an AI voice of someone you care about? Imagine your sibling or partner dying in an accident and someone harassing you with their voice. Imagine an AI voice dub becomes a meme, repeated across the internet, to the point that it damages the reputation of someone. Maybe someone hates you and decides to use your voice to make “you” say terrible, hateful things online that make it hard for you to deny it’s you. “The internet is forever” is a common phrase. Usually, it’s to remind you that you shouldn’t upload something that you wouldn’t want a stranger to see in the future. But now it’s a reminder that your presence on the internet can outlive you. It might not even be shaped by you. If someone takes your image, your voice, and misrepresents you online, you may never be able to delete it.
It’s Just Too Easy
Drake using AI just wasn’t right. He took someone’s voice and make them say things they didn’t say, then released it online where it has spread. In his defense, he has taken it down, but the damage is done, and might have hurt more than he meant it to. It’s not the last we’ll see of this, and it’s certainly not the worst we’ll see. As long as there aren’t laws to protect people from malicious uses AI, we’re going to see far worse than a few obviously faked lines on a diss track.
The fact is, stealing someone’s legacy with AI is so easy, it could be automated. Someone could set up a bot to comb through all the public videos or photos of a person who, say, liked a certain video or held a certain political persuasion. Easily you could automate AI-assisted harassment with a bot released online. You could make a bot to harass someone with their own voice without much difficulty, and you wouldn’t even have to know them. Write the bot and release it. Who’s to blame? The internet is forever, and if harassment can force you out of a job, bring threats to your door, hurt your friendships, or make you depressed, your false presence online could last much longer than you do.
We need laws to protect people from malicious uses of AI, before more people get seriously hurt. I know, I know. Another scaremongering AI piece by some blogger. And, I get it, AI is exciting. But so is fire. Don’t learn how to contain it, and you’ll never get fireworks, you’ll just get ashes. The internet is full of spite, overflowing with hate, with people who have far less to lose than Drake. Do you really want them playing with fire too?