Artificial intelligence has original singers performing "Weird Al" Yankovic's parodies... and it's pretty horrifying

This is already the scariest thing I've seen all month... and it's only October 2nd.  A terrible, terrible line has been crossed.  Advanced technology really is taking us to places that, not to put too fine a point on it, are unnatural to the extreme.

Andy Baio at Waxy.org has applied artificial intelligence to a lot of songs - which are mostly parodies of other artists - by "Weird Al" Yankovic.  Baio's intent with this dubious exercise is to see what would happen if the original artists performed Al's parodies themselves.

In other words, Baio has Michael Jackson's voice singing Yankovic's "Eat It".  Among others.

Let Mr. Baio indict himse... I mean, explain himself:

In the parallel universe of last year’s Weird: The Al Yankovic Story, Dr. Demento encourages a young Al Yankovic (Daniel Radcliffe) to move away from song parodies and start writing original songs of his own. During an LSD trip, Al writes “Eat It,” a 100% original song that’s definitely not based on any other song, which quickly becomes “the biggest hit by anybody, ever.”

Later, Weird Al’s enraged to learn from his manager that former Jackson 5 frontman Michael Jackson turned the tables on him, changing the words of “Eat It” to make his own parody, “Beat It.”

This got me thinking: what if every Weird Al song was the original, and every other artist was covering his songs instead? With recent advances in A.I. voice cloning, I realized that I could bring this monstrous alternate reality to life.

This was a terrible idea and I regret everything.

This is a horrific milestone in digital manipulation.  There is no going back now.  Like the Joker said in The Dark Knight "You've changed things, forever."

Mash down here to read more about this experiment in abominable intelligence.  God have mercy on us all.

 

EDIT 10/08/2023 2:44 AM: Feel led to say something here.  All of this "the horror! the horror!" was done purely tongue in cheek.  I actually think is pretty cool.  Excellent work Mr. Baio :-)

Categories: artificial intelligence, computers, humor, music, parody, technology, weird al yankovic