Young Guru Concerned By Kendrick Lamar Deepfake Voice: "It’s The Evil That Men Do With the Tech"

In a viral clip shared to Instagram, audio engineer and producer Young Guru expressed concern over Kendrick Lamar A.I. voice filter.

Young Guru is taking a stance against deepfake A.I. technology used to replicate voices of top artists including Kendrick Lamar. While sharing a recent viral clip to Instagram, where a man uses an A.I.-powered filter to replicate Lamar's voice, Guru also wrote his opinions about the technology.

"This has dominated my Howard group chat for a couple days,” said Guru. “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.”

Guru shared that while the voice filter is impressive, it raises concerns from established artists from whom the technology is based upon.

"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,” he added. “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.”

The 48-year-old Roc Nation act also expressed his fears over the technology causing future utilizations.

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.”

He concluded by predicting that more A.I. deepfake voices are incoming.

“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!!"