After a week of silence following the controversy surrounding the popular Stefanie Sun AI, the real Singaporean singer-songwriter recently took to her blog to address the issue.
Writing about it on Make Music on 22 May, the singer said, “My fans have officially switched sides and accepted that I am indeed obscure while my AI persona is the current hot property. I mean really, how do you fight with someone who is putting out new albums in the time span of minutes?”
“Whether it is ChatGPT or AI or whatever name you want to call it, this “thing” is now capable of mimicking and/or conjuring, unique and complicated content by processing a gazillion chunks of information while piecing and putting together in a most coherent manner the task being asked at hand. Wait a minute, isn’t that what humans do? The very task that we have always convinced ourselves; that the formation of thought or opinion is not replicable by robots, the very idea that this is beyond their league, is now the looming thing that will threaten thousands of human conjured jobs. Legal, medical, accountancy, and currently, singing a song.”
Stefanie said that at this point, she felt like she is eating popcorn and watching in the best seat in the theatre, adding that it’s like watching “Everything Everywhere All At Once”, except that in this case, the notion of love will not save the day.
“In this boundless sea of existence, where anything is possible, where nothing matters, I think it will be purity of thought, that being exactly who you are will be enough,” she added.
It is noted that Stefanie Sun’s name suddenly became viral on Bilibili, when cover of songs by the artificial intelligence versions of her spread on the said Chinese video platform, singing songs like Jay Chou’s “Hair Like Snow” and “Love Before BC, as well as Koji Wada’s “Butter-Fly.”
Although Stefanie’s management label has not considered legal action, it was reported that record labels of songs that the AI covered have asked for it to be removed.
(Photo Source: Stefanie Sun IG)