AI Turns Hit Spice Girls Song Into A Gritty Nine Inch Nails Cover

We've seen examples of AI attempting to write poems, stories, and even holiday jingles. A new example of this technology as a creator is far more fun, however, and it involves the hit Spice Girls song "Wannabe." Using OpenAI Jukebox, the pop song has been recreated as a loud, gritty rock song in the style of the band Nine Inch Nails.

The song transformation was recently published by YouTuber 'JohnDopamine5,' and it covers only the first 15 seconds of the Spice Girls track. The resulting 'cover' song is slower with a distinct industrial nature, and though it doesn't sound quite right, as far as a song goes, it would be easy enough to mistake it as an actual artist-produced track if you weren't paying too much attention.

The AI cover song was made possible by OpenAI Jukebox, a neural network that can take a song, including simple singing, and transform it into the style of various music genres, including everything from a Frank Sinatra classic to heavy metal.

The OpenAI team has a number of demonstrations of this technology on SoundCloud, including ones that create music in the style of popular artists like Katy Perry and Elvis Presley. There is, for example, what seems to be 'Baby Shark' recreated in the style of a Beatles song.

OpenAI explains some of the technology behind Jukebox on its website, including its work in progressing from MuseNet music generation based on MIDI data to taking raw audio and transforming it — vocals and all — into an entirely different type of song.