An AI Singer Named Anna Indiana Just Released Her First Song And It’s Disturbing, At Best
Lately it seems like AI is slowly seeping into every form of entertainment. From creating visual art pieces, even to writing children’s storybooks, AI is spreading into many different artforms at an alarming rate. The robots have stepped up their game even more with Anna Indiana, an AI singer-songwriter who released her first single last week.
As of right now, it’s not known exactly who created Anna Indiana or what their goal was in doing so. But if their mission was to take everyone on a creepy musical tour through the uncanny valley, well mission freakin’ accomplished.
Anna Indiana first single, Betrayed By This Town, was posted on YouTube last week, and was everyone’s introduction to the AI singer. Try to watch this all the way through without feeling the least bit uneasy. Godspeed.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0l71Hh1gPkE
So that was…something. The song was 100% computer-generated, including the lyrics, instrumentation and of course Anna’s vocals. Call me old-fashioned, but the idea of a soulless computer program with unyielding eye contact singing off-beat about destroying entire cities isn’t my idea of a bop.
According to a report from Inquirer, the internet was just as put off by this as I am. One particularly scathing comment sums it up quite succinctly: “Use AI to make drudgery easier, not to ruin the activities we enjoy.”
Even with Anna Indiana giving most of the internet collective cringe tremors, there were some in the scientific community who applauded the effort. The Inquirer report notes a supportive comment reading, “Despite the obvious shortcomings, the fact this can be done to a near human level with off-the-shelf tools in 2023 is an astonishing technical accomplishment that few would have predicted a few years ago.”
This all reminds me of the timeless adage: just because you can, doesn’t mean you should. As impressive as the technology behind this may be, in my opinion it just feels wrong. Don’t expect Anna Indiana to be at the top of anybody’s Spotify Wrapped list next month.
