Page 134 - Weiss, Jernej, ur./ed. 2025. Glasbena interpretacija: med umetniškim in znanstvenim┊Music Interpretation: Between the Artistic and the Scientific. Koper/Ljubljana: Založba Univerze na Primorskem in Festival Ljubljana. Studia musicologica Labacensia, 8

glasbena interpretacija ... | music interpretation ...
is likely to lead to a collapse of the systems in the long run. It it here that
the potential relevance of AI for musical interpretation will become clear.

AI Recreations Of Human Voices
Today generative AI is already used in many areas to create music. Yet this
involves not just creating new pieces, or Vocaloids (voice-synthesising soft-
4
ware) such as Hatsune Miku. The way AI “learns” from existing data in or-
der to generate its output (discussed in the next section) lends itself to recre-
ating or imitating the sound of existing voices and copying real-life artists.
This can be done with the purpose of demonstrating the, by now, astonish-
ing abilities of the AI systems. Yet another (and far more likely) utilisation
occurs in order to make money by duping unsuspecting listeners who may
think they are listening to a new track by a singer they love when they have
actually encountered a fake AI recreation of that singer’s voice.
Such an AI-generated recreation of a singer’s voice first made major
headlines in April 2023 when “Ghostwriter977” released the song “Heart
5
on My Sleeve” on a range of streaming platforms, including TikTok, You-
Tube, Spotify and others. “Heart on My Sleeve” featured the voices of Ca-
nadian musicians Drake and The Weeknd, yet had been created without
their knowledge or consent with the help of AI. Ghostwriter openly ac-
knowledged the AI contribution to the song’s creation. It emerged later that
the song was not entirely AI-generated: The still unknown “Ghostwriter”
(who wears a bedsheet and sunglasses in his videos) stressed in an anon-
ymous interview that “[i]t is definitely my songwriting, my production and
my voice.” AI’s contribution thus consists of changing Ghostwriter’s voice
6
so that it sounds like those of Drake and The Weeknd – what is called a
“deepfake” of their voices. Within weeks the track was removed from all
7
platforms at the behest of Universal Music Group, the company represent-
4 Hatsune Miku Official Website, https://piapro.net/intl/en.html.
5 Ghostwriter, “Ghostwriter – Heart on my Sleeve Drake ft. The Weeknd (Remastered
AI song),” Buko, uploaded on 20 April 2023, YouTube video, 2:11, https://www.you-
tube.com/watch?v=rQssjhX31Z0.
6 Kristin Robinson, “Ghostwriter, the Mastermind Behind the Viral Drake AI Song,
Speaks For the First Time,” Billboard, November 11, 2023, https://www.billboard.
com/music/pop/ghostwriter-heart-on-my-sleeve-drake-ai-grammy-exclusive-in-
terview-1235434099/.
7 Aiden Kenway explains in this YouTube video how the song was likely created with
the help of AI: Aiden Kenway, “How the VIRAL Drake Song ‘Heart on my Sleeve’
was Made,” uploaded on 18 May 2023, YouTube video, 9:55, https://www.youtube.
com/watch?v=pkbQV71ZvK4.

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