‘We own control of our voice’: Taiwan singer Sandee Chan says don’t fear the machines as she reveals new song was ‘sung’ by artificial intelligence
- Chan tells the Post that artificial technology will never replace the job of a music producer
- The singer revealed the secret behind her new song, ‘Teach me the ways to be your lover’, one week after its release
A singer in Taiwan has shocked her fans by announcing that her new song was “sung” by artificial intelligence, sparking a debate on whether AI can replace human creativity.
On March 22, Sandee Chan, a Filipino-born Taiwan singer and music producer said on Weibo and Facebook: “Today I am finally revealing this truth: ‘Teach me the ways to be your lover’ was sung by Sandee Chan’s AI model.”
The singer, who has also won five Golden Melody Awards, said: “If the age of AI is bound to come, perhaps what songwriters should care about is not ‘whether we will be replaced’, but ‘what else can we do’.”
Chan told the Post that she has always been “concerned about the changes and impact of AI” and that she was invited by Taiwan AI Labs to collaborate on the new song.
She said she was pleasantly surprised when the song “escaped” the strict ears of a recording engineer.
The singer, who was born in 1970 and has released 16 solo albums, said in her post that in January, Taiwan AI Labs created a voice based on a number of her previous songs.
Chan then “trained” the intelligent-created voice to make it sound closer to her authentic sound. The single was released on March 14, White Valentine’s Day.
Self-composed by Chan, the lyrics were written by Hong Kong’s Chow Yiu-fai.
On its initial release, Chan did not reveal the AI secret.
Several fans described the song as “beautiful” on Chan’s Facebook page.
A week after its release, Chan’s announcement of the “truth” about the song sparked a bigger debate.
The video for the song has been viewed more than 180,000 times on Weibo and has attracted thousands of reposts and comments.
On Facebook, Chan’s post has been liked more than 8,000 times and reposted more than 1,600 times.
A Weibo commenter said: “This experiment by Sandee Chan is so meaningful. The hot debate about AI has also brought AI anxiety.”
Many videos of people online training their AI to simulate singers can be found on the Chinese video site Bilibili. But Chan is the first Chinese singer to release a song using an AI model publicly.
What Chan is proving with this song, however, is not the power of AI, but that “the job of a music producer cannot be replaced”, she said.
“How to sublimate AI emotionally ultimately requires the ability of the producer and their musical imagination,” Chan said on social media, adding: “We own control of our voice.”
In the past month, some AI models, exemplified by ChatGPT developed by OpenAI, have generated buzz around the world, including on the mainland and in Taiwan, and it is against this backdrop that Chan’s AI-sung song was released.
Chan also believes that Chinese pop music is very text-oriented, making the reality of AI lyric writing “a long way off”.
“We have to be proactive in thinking about how to defend what we call art in our minds, and even whether it will still be human art in the future,” she said.
