AI Tupac and the murky legality of digital necromancy

The Indicator from Planet Money

NPR

Business

4.7 • 9.5K Ratings

🗓️ 21 May 2024

⏱️ 11 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

With a few clicks of AI software, anyone can conjure the voice or visual likeness of a dead celebrity — or really anyone. This new world has opened up a bunch of new legal questions about the rights of people and their heirs to control digital replicas of themselves. Today on the show, how a Drake diss track featuring the voice of Tupac made it into the Congressional record, and how it may lead to more regulation of AI.

To read more of Greg Rosalsky's reporting, subscribe to Planet Money's newsletter.

Related episodes:
AI creates, transforms and destroys ... jobs (Apple / Spotify)
Are the Products in your shopping cart real? (Apple / Spotify)
Planet Money makes an episode using AI

For sponsor-free episodes of The Indicator from Planet Money, subscribe to Planet Money+ via Apple Podcasts or at plus.npr.org.

Music by Drop Electric. Find us: TikTok, Instagram, Facebook, Newsletter.

Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoices

NPR Privacy Policy

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	NPR.
0:05.0	In late April, U.S.
0:11.0	In late April, U.S. Senator Tom Tylus began testimony before a Senate hearing, and he did something kind of strange for a stuffy institution like Congress.
0:20.0	He played a new song from the rapper Drake.
0:23.0	We got staff ready to cue that up.
0:26.0	The song he played is called Taylor Made Freestyle,
0:29.0	but it wasn't Drake's rap verse he wanted Congress to hear.
0:32.0	The song features the voice of the
0:33.8	legendary and long-dead rapper Tupac Shakur.
0:37.0	The kid you we need you, the West Coast Savior, ain't crazy your name,
0:41.4	it's some hip-hop history. And yeah, in this new Drake song uses a kind of modern form of sorcery.
0:47.5	It uses AI to resurrect Tupac from the dead and manufacture a completely new and synthetic verse delivered in the
0:55.0	late rapper's voice.
0:56.0	Okay, so Drake, he didn't ask for permission from the late rapper's estate, and they ended
1:00.9	up sending a cease and desist letter.
1:03.0	They demanded that Drake take the song down or else they'd sue him.
1:07.0	Drake did end up taking it down.
1:09.0	However, there's this murky legal landscape regulating AI creations.
1:14.2	And it's unclear whether two bucks a state
1:16.5	actually has the law on their side in this.
1:20.3	This is the indicator from Planet Money. I'm Greg Rosalski.
1:24.0	And I'm Adrian Ma.
	...

Please login to see the full transcript.

Previous episode | Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from NPR, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of NPR and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.