Idol group SNH48 performs with clones
BEIJING: When clones assembled by artificial intelligence (AI) are taking over the stage, do you applaud or keep checking your phone?
That’s what Chinese girl idol group SNH48 are trying to find out.
During their performances, six of the most popular members are singing and dancing with digital copies of themselves.
That’s apparent from a fourminute music video, co-produced by Tencent-backed artificial intelligence (AI) start-up ObEN.
It claims to be the world’s first commercially released song costarring human singers and their AI 3D avatars.
Explained Xiong Wei, vicepresident of the Shanghaibased SNH48: “This song is our first step to test the waters in the virtual idol market. We are planning to create more intelligent virtual idols, releasing albums and making movies for them.”
Similar to Japanese idol girl group AKB48, SNH48 features more than 100 female performers aged about 20 who perform regularly at the group’s own theatre and interact with fans mainly via live promotional events.
SNH48’s partnership with ObEN is not the only one exploring the potential of AI in the entertainment industry. AI Stars, a joint venture with S.M. Entertainment, South Korea’s largest entertainment agency, claims to be the first celebrity AI agency, combining the intellectual property of SM’s top K-pop stars with ObEN’s AI technology to create new interactive experiences and products.
In the music video, which features the song Now and Forever, the solo performance is handled by the real SNH48 stars while the chorus is sung by their AI clones. The dance moves show the interaction between the human singers and their digital copies.
To create digital clones of the singers, ObEN used photographs and voice recordings, with each singer required to read 100 to 200 sentences which were used as sample data for the AI algorithm. The result was a digital avatar that could sing like each group member and even speak multiple languages in their own voices, according to Adam Zheng, chief operating officer and co-founder of ObEN.
Said Zheng: “Our personal AI technology has great potential in the entertainment industry. Let’s say you have an actor who stars in a movie. A producer may want him to sing the ending theme song, which he is not good at. We can make his AI avatar sing for him.”
This song is our first step to test the waters in the virtual idol market. We are planning to create more intelligent virtual idols, releasing albums and making movies for them. Xiong Wei, vice-president of the Shanghai-based SNH48