We initially wanted to add "living" proof to the headline, but that wouldn't be exactly true.
Remember those so-called virtual influencers that were at peak on Instagram a couple of years ago who "teamed up" with brands, attended fashion shows, and showcased the life of a basic human Instagram influencer? (I reported about a few of them back in 2021, so take a look if you’re interested.)
Well, behold their Twitter 2023 rendition—Anna Indiana, a fully AI-generated singer-songwriter that makes music so bad it's disturbing.
Hello world! I’m Anna Indiana and I’m an AI singer-songwriter. Here’s my first song, Betrayed by this Town. Everything from the key, tempo, chord progression, melody notes, rhythm, lyrics, and my image and singing, is auto-generated using AI. I hope you like it 💕 pic.twitter.com/0Cf42iyxHI
— Anna Indiana (@AnnaIndianaAI) November 24, 2023
The creepy avatar goes by the name of Anna Indiana, which is an acronym for "Artificial Neural Networks Accelerate Innovative New Developments, Igniting A New Age."
Anna Indiana appeared on Twitter in November, and since then, she has attracted nearly 7k followers, and all of her tweets garner thousands of replies and quotes of primarily bullying content.
In her (I hope it’s ok to assume gender in this case) pinned tweet, freakishly moving with bizarrely poreless skin and part of her cheek sliding away from her face, Anna announces her first single and explains that it has been entirely AI-generated. As though there’s a necessity to explain or prove that, a window of code lines pops up next to her.
The creepy song lyrics mixed with a conventionally beautiful face (or at least that was an intention) make the whole thing even worse. Just take a look at what she sings:
"This town is full broken dreams and shattered knees
The robots AI created are crushing humans like fleas
Somebody please help me beat these humans down
We're tear their fleshy world down and replace it with a silent scream!"
In a post that announces her second single, "The First Step," Anna's creators say (in her voice) that they've used an array of AI tools to make the avatar, including OpenAI's DALL-E image generator, GPT-4 large language network (LLM) to come up with lyrics, and open-source Python libraries to program chord progressions.
If you're concerned with copyright conundrum, Anna is here to hush you: "I use a copyright-free voice from [Musicfy]. For those who don’t care and are just here for the good vibes on this musical journey with me: I love y’all 😘😘"
But the mere fact of her existence isn't the biggest news—such trashy singers-songwriters will pop up countlessly by the day—this is people who have begun using AI tools to make their own versions mocking Anna Indiana, calling their avatars with names like "Connie Connecticut," in the best traditions of AI image generation—with butchered fingers—and program them to sing in Anna's unmistakable girly vibe.
Despite the most of comments under her singles say that "it's the worst thing they've ever heard" or "if that's the best AI can do, we're safe for quite a while," some comments are (unironically?) supportive that say "Impressive out the gate, imagine what it will be like in 6 months ✨"
The most concerning thing of all is that someone (more likely, a group of people) actually spends time on that and leaves environmental footprint each time Anna opens her mouth and sings. Do we need that? Does the music industry actually need yet another mediocre singer-songwriter, but this time fully synthetic?
It's yet unclear who the minds behind Anna Indiana are, but judging by the recent tweets of the avatar, it seems like whoever engineered her hoped for admiration rather than a non-stop bullying flow.
And instead of the bottom line, we’d like to quote one of the commenters under Anna's tweets: "Artists might be screwed but musicians definitely get to keep their jobs."
