An interesting conversation in Wired with the "computer musician" Holly Herndon, who created an AI-powered vocal clone called Holly+ that is, at least theoretically, infinitely capable. “There’s a narrative around a lot of this stuff that it’s scary dystopian. I’m trying to present another side: This is an opportunity" - Herndon says. She recently released Holly+’s cover of Dolly Parton’s 'Jolene' (watch it below). Wired also makes a good point - It’s not creepy. It’s pop culture.

"A voice is inherently communal. I learned how to use my voice by mimicking the people around me through language, through centuries of evolution on that, or even vocal styles. A pop music vocal is often you're kind of emulating something that came before and then performing your individuality through that kind of communal voice. So I wanted to find a way to kind of reflect that communal ownership" - experimental musician Holly Herndon says to The Fader about her audio deep-fake AI Holly+. Herndon encourages her fans to upload audio files so they can be sung in her voice. She goes into the metaphysics of it: "I mean, we've been able to kind of re-animate our dead through moving picture or through samples, but this is kind of a brand new kind of field in that you can have the person do something that they never did. It's not just kind of replaying something that they've done in the past. You can kind of re-animate them in and give them entirely new phrases that they may not have approved of in their lifetime or even for living artists that they might not approve of. So I think it opens up a kind of Pandora's box".

Berlin-based musician and sound artist Holly Herndon has released a new artificial intelligence tool Holly+, which she refers to as her “digital twin”, that allows fans to upload any polyphonic audio and receive a new version of that music sung in Herndon’s own voice. Holly+ is as much a technological and artistic experiment, as it is a response to, and embrace of, the rise of deepfake technology, The Fader reports.

Earlier this month, an ad agency space150 shared a song and music video called 'Jack Park Canny Dope Man', credited to an A.I. called “Travisbott”, based on Travis Scott’s original music and lyrics. The song was lousy, but it raises a serious question: How do we deal with the sampling and reproduction of an existing artist’s musical likeness when someone completely unrelated stands to profit from it? Holly Herndon, who collaborated with A.I. on her last album, raised the issue: A.I. is getting better at sounding like human beings, so what will the humans controlling the A.I. do with that power? Herndon told the Fader that she saw something like Travisbott coming: “I think we're going to see a flood of automated compositions, people using neural nets to extract the logic from other people's work and a lot of appropriation. We're going to see big issues around attribution”.

“The ideal of technology and automation should allow us to be more human and more expressive together, not replace us all together” - Holly Herndon shared her thoughts about the effects of artificial intelligence on music (urged by that silly Grimes-Zola Jesus feud). Herndon proposes that AI might be used to move towards an “interdependent” […]

We needn’t raise technology to be a “monster.” 'PROTO' is a love song to the capacity for machine-made music to be full of life - artist Holly Herndon wrote about her amazing new album which she made with help from a artificial intelligence she named Spawn. She explains in an interview with the Vice: "We wanted to […]