Microsoft releases ‘creepy’ video of the Mona Lisa rapping: ‘If only Da Vinci could witness this’
Mona Lisa is brushing up on her rap skills.
Microsoft put out an artificial intelligence-generated video of Leonardo Da Vinci’s Mona Lisa rapping, and viewers have strong opinions.
The tech giant revealed its new AI technology called VASA-1 which can take a still image and an audio clip and combine them to generate lifelike videos of talking faces.
To demonstrate this, Microsoft released a clip of the Mona Lisa rapping to “Paparazzi” — not the Lady Gaga song, but rather a rap Anne Hathaway wrote and performed on Conan O’Brien’s talk show in 2011.
The clip, which was released as part of research published on April 16, quickly went viral, with one post containing the video racking up 7.1 million views on X (formerly Twitter) as of Monday morning.
People had strong reactions in response to the viral video, with one questioning, “Why does this need to exist? I can’t think of any positives.”
One person found the clip funny, saying that it had her “rolling on floor laughing.”
“Another day another terrifying ai video 😩,” someone lamented.
“This is wild, freaky and creepy all at once 🤯,” another person wrote.
“Oh man. If only Da Vinci could witness this,” a user quipped.
“I think this rapping Mona Lisa has swizzled my temporal lobes,” one commented.
Microsoft explained that the “out-of-distribution generalization” method exhibits “the capability to handle photo and audio inputs that are out of the training distribution.”
“For example, it can handle artistic photos, singing audios, and non-English speech. These types of data were not present in the training set.”
The company highlighted the positive impacts of the new AI technology, such as enhancing educational equity, improving accessibility for those with communication challenges, and offering companionship or therapeutic support to those in need.
However, they also warned that it is not intended to “mislead or deceive” and there is the risk that it could be misused for impersonating humans.
Due to all of the considerations of the AI technology, Microsoft said they have “no plans to release an online demo, API, product, additional implementation details, or any related offerings until we are certain that the technology will be used responsibly and in accordance with proper regulations.”
