Young Guru Reacts to the Kendrick Lamar AI Voice Filter

Young Guru recently took to Instagram where he showed concern over a video where someone used a Kendrick Lamar AI voice filter to make their voice sound like the Compton MC’s.

“This has dominated my Howard group chat for a couple days,” Guru said in the caption.  “Ok I’m at the point where I can voice my concerns with our current state of AI. I have followed as many versions of what AI could do for some years now. I remember being at MIT and students showing me a project where they were actively feeding a computer ‘All’ the jazz records that ever existed. So that AI could analyze and create music in any style of any musician. I didn’t think we would get here this fast with the voice.”

He added that while he thinks the technology is impressive, he cant but think what could happen if or even when this technology gets into the wrong hands, saying that we are in a “very groundbreaking and dangerous moment.”

 “Of course my mind goes to the ethical and legal aspects of what can be done with programs like Tacotron 2. You add that to the power of ChatGPT and you realize we are in a very groundbreaking but dangerous moment. It’s not the tech, it’s the evil that men do with the tech. There are legal aspects because at this present moment you can’t copyright a voice.”

He then envisioned a scenario where someone could use AI technology to make a song with their favorite rapper’s voice, or even worse. “The ability to create a Manchurian Candidate scares me. Think about that in every industry,” he continued. “There are still states that don’t even have a law against revenge porn. I’m sorry to go there but imagine the repercussion on our kids when 5 years from now some high school kid gets mad at his ex-girlfriend and creates a whole ‘deep fake’ that sounds and looks real. Imagine the political landscape where we can’t believe anything we hear because someone will claim they didn’t say it.”

Guru concluded by pushing for laws that prevent AI from being used in certain ways, but adding that we’re just getting started and have yet to see all that will come with AI.

“I don’t even want to continue giving examples for fear that someone will go out and do it. The law has to change to protect everyone not just Public Figures,” he wrote. “And the super scary part is that we are just getting started, we feed the beast constantly everyday with more and more content to be studied. Maybe the Luddites had a point. The book by Gavin Mueller Breaking Things At Work starts to take on a way more urgent role!!”