Deepfaking Axl Rose

Guns N' Roses' song One in a Million is a rock ballad from the late 80's. It has some very dubious lyrics, with one infamously offensive verse in particular. My brother challenged me to bring it into the 21st century.

I have thus deepfaked Axl Rose and made the song much more wholesome. Click on the image below for a short audio clip of my improved verse:

The replacement lyrics were generated by ChatGPT after I asked it for a politically correct version of the original verse. It did so perfectly:

Friends from far places, they bring new joy to me
They come to our country and enrich our harmony
Sharing their cultures, foods, and dreams with us so freely
They speak with voices kind and warm, in love and unity

Then I used Udio's exciting new 'upload music' and 'inpainting' features to change the original lyrics to the new wholesome ones. It's very impressive how well it mimics Axl's vocal style.

 

Wider Implications

This is my first experience of 'deepfaking' anything. It was very easy to do. Advances in the tech are only going to make it easier. Many people fear AI because of an imagined future scenario where machine superintelligence has become a threat, but the potential for harm is already here, and deepfaking is clearly one space that needs to be watched closely.

Udio is a fantastic music generation tool and I wouldn't bet against it being able to change spoken dialogue if given a political speech... Even if not, there are clearly other tools that can. In the near future there may be a point where we're so used to fake images, fake audio and fake video that we view any type of media with scepticism. But before that, while deepfaking technology is fresh, a lot of people are going to be misled by a lot of AI generated or AI edited propaganda. The US 2024 elections are going to be interesting, to say the least.