Universal Music Group, which has Drake, the Weeknd, and Metro Boomin under recording contracts, has spent the past several days working to purge “Heart on My Sleeve” from every last corner of the internet. What if artificial intelligence puts working class writers and artists out of jobs, and what if this isn’t just a labor problem but also a cultural one? What if we gradually lost the ability to distinguish between sights, sounds, and ideas produced by humans and similar content produced by software? What if “Heart on My Sleeve,” or something like it, tops the Hot 100? This feels like a point of no return.įrank Ocean Is Human-and So Was His Disastrous Coachella Set What if the latest advances in artificial intelligence accelerate the rate of job loss due to automation? Of course, as a critic, I’m inclined to concern myself with the cultural dimension. What if HAL 9000? What if Skynet? Others are more concerned with the economic impact. Some of these critics are posing the big civilizational questions of postapocalyptic science fiction. Tech critics and AI skeptics have spent the past several months-ever since OpenAI launched ChatGPT in November, effectively-agonizing about the potential implications for humanity. ![]() The recent spike in the sophistication of artificial intelligence applications excites some people and terrifies others. There’s now a cottage industry of content creators churning out their own AI impersonations of popular artists-Drake, Kanye West, Travis Scott-though none of the others I’ve encountered so far are quite as technically impressive or technologically menacing as “Heart on My Sleeve.” I rate it a bit lower, though, as a song. Overall, I rate “Heart on My Sleeve” highly as a passable imitation. The beat is much less convincing though: Metro Boomin wouldn’t typically employ a piano melody in such a clunky and repetitive style. The verses preserve some signature tics: Drake ending every one of his bars with a guttural discharge (“ay,” “yeah”) and the Weeknd initially mimicking Drake’s flow but then getting a little looser later in his verse (though my colleague Alyssa Bereznak notes some uncharacteristic sheepishness in his high notes). Drake and the Weeknd both play on some recent romantic drama involving Justin Bieber, Hailey Bieber, and Selena Gomez. The song is a shockingly passable counterfeit composed with a careful consideration of the artists’ personalities and tendencies. It’s worth evaluating the quality of “Heart on My Sleeve” before we wrestle with the supposed cyber-dystopian implications of this sort of thing. There’s a lot of TV out there. We want to help: Every week, we’ll tell you the best and most urgent shows to stream so you can stay on top of the ever-expanding heap of Peak TV. (You can hear examples of both approaches in other unambiguous instances.) ![]() He’s so far withheld any explanation of how exactly he made the song, so it’s unclear whether the voice performances on “Heart on My Sleeve” were entirely generated by AI or simply modified to make the “real” performer sound like Drake and the Weeknd. The song’s true producer, a mysterious figure currently known only as Ghostwriter, first shared “Heart on My Sleeve” on TikTok. So this month, it was a surprise to hear a fateful new song, “Heart on My Sleeve,” featuring Drake and the Weeknd, produced by Metro Boomin-but not really, as the song was composed by artificial intelligence. As hip-hop and R&B superstars out of Toronto, Drake and the Weeknd were once close collaborators, but their careers diverged when the Weeknd signed to Republic Records and killed the joint fan base’s dream of OVOXO. It’s been a decade since Drake and the Weeknd last performed together on a record: Drake featured on “Live For,” a single from the Weeknd’s maligned debut album, Kiss Land.
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