Remember a few years ago, when NFTs were all the rage?
Yeah, I don’t know why I brought that up. Anyway, everybody seems to be really into “AI” right now — or at least, algorithms that imitate artificial intelligence (ChatGPT ain’t passing a Turing test anytime soon) — and that’s led to some quirky, fun apps like the aforementioned ChatGPT and a new Drake song generator.
Drayk.it lets users type in a song concept — or randomly generate one — and out pops a reasonable facsimile of a one-minute Drake song, which is performed by a Drake bot.
Obviously, there’s a lot of fun to be had with getting Drake to sing about something other than his broken heart, and fans are stretching that idea to its absolute limits. Suggestions have so far included a lost wallet (A Tribe Called Quest did it first/better), Drake’s Shabbos reading list, and a song about a turtle pirate(???).
https://twitter.com/saxabras/status/1619418982414712834
https://twitter.com/MREisenmann/status/1619003778765828096
AI Drake song about a turtle in a pirate ship, raiding other ships for a special treasure. This is better than God's Plan https://t.co/UU9uoklSvY pic.twitter.com/WXJZByGt9U
— Wilson Hobbs 🌁 (@WiLSONSACCOUNT) January 24, 2023
And sure, this is all in good fun, but whenever Drake gets around to pulling a Rick Astley and suing the pants off the app’s creators, this sort of thing will probably see a lot of legal scrutiny within the next few years. This is kind of a far cry from that Views cover art generator. This is actual likeness and art, which will need to be protected.
The genie’s out of the bottle now, and I can think of at least three ways this could be used for nefarious ends, and while Drake isn’t much of a sympathetic figure, there are hundreds of other recording artists out there who could be harmed by this. For now, we’ll enjoy making Drake rap about Warrior Nun or whatever, but the dominoes are already falling.
