JAY-Z & Roc Nation Are Trying To Get Deepfakes Using His Voice Taken Down

The clips feature the hip-hop mogul doing things like rapping the Book of Genesis, Billy Joel’s “We Didn’t Start the Fire,” and William Shakespeare's “To Be or Not to Be” soliloquy from Hamlet.

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JAY-Z & Roc Nation Are Trying To Get Deepfakes Using His Voice Taken Down

Source: Allen Berezovsky / Getty

For some strange reason, JAY-Z’s voice is being replicated using artificial intelligence in what is called “deepfakes” on YouTube. Jigga man’s company Roc Nation has noticed and is trying to get them taken down.

The videos in question feature a very accurate copy of Hova’s voice but are not being used maliciously at all. The clips feature the hip-hop mogul doing things like rapping the Book of Genesis, Billy Joel’s “We Didn’t Start the Fire,” and William Shakespeare’s “To Be or Not to Be” soliloquy from Hamlet.

Hov’s entertainment company, Roc Nation LLC, issued a series of copyright strikes against the above videos uploaded to YouTube. The Verge reported the notices “specifically cite AI, with Roc Nation writing, this content unlawfully uses an AI to impersonate our client’s voice.”

Two of the videos utilizing the deepfakes of JAY-Z’s voice stayed up, the Book of Genesis and infamous Navy Seal copypasta meme can be found on YouTube still. The videos were taken down but have since been reinstated by YouTube. In a statement to The Verge, a Google spokesperson stated:

“After reviewing the DMCA takedown requests for the videos in question, we determined that they were incomplete. Pending additional information from the claimant, we have temporarily reinstated the videos.”

Now, if you’re wondering how these videos are made, a user uploads JAY-Z’s songs and lyrics into Google’s open-source Tacotron 2 text-to-speech model.

You can check out one of the deepfakes that caught Jigga’s attention below.