During a recent episode of his YouTube video series, the Darkness frontman Justin Hawkins shared his opinions on some covers created using his AI-generated voice.
After listening to the AI cover of the Darkness song, ‘Sticky Situations,’ the singer said:
“That bit sounds just like [singing the part]. It’s pretty good. It’s a bloody weird thing to do an AI cover with a computer trying to simulate what was already there in the first place or generate it rather.”
Elaborating on his views on the matter, he continued:
“It’s weird to sort of… What happens is you listen to it, and you go, ‘Okay, yeah, this is me,’ or if it’s really bad, you just have no sort of connection to it at all because if it’s not right, it’s just not right.
Voices are unique, aren’t they? And imagine that this software is going to become completely flawless, and it’ll be able to simulate the nuances of the individual that they’re trying to copy.”
However, Hawkins thinks AI has some shortcomings:
“But at the moment, it’s almost like you can hear the affectations from the original recording being applied to something that’s just generating a timbre, and also, it doesn’t make the right choices in terms of how hard to hit certain things.
And there’s got to be more dynamic scope in the way they simulate certain areas of it, but it’s really exciting to sort of imagine that somebody’s wasted like five to six minutes of their time generating these things. It’s actually quite flattering. I would say imitation is the sincerest form of flattering.”
Besides the Darkness track, the vocalist also reacted to the AI versions of Queen’s ‘Killer Queen,’ ABBA’s ‘When All Is Said And Done,’ and Queen’s ‘Rain Must Fall,’ created using his voice in the same video. While more examples are being produced day by day, AI-generated songs seem to occupy the agenda in the coming days.
You can watch his full video below.
