AI Will Resurrect Dead Musicians And Challenge Our Ideas Of Ownership

What happens when your favorite deceased singers make new music

Elvis May Be Gone, But His Voice Lives On And Can Make New Music — Created By Author In Starryai

I want you to picture a standard wall calendar in your mind. Now, we’re going to alter it. This calendar will stretch for ninety years instead of one, and will be an approximation of your life, with an end date. Consider it a countdown till death.

Blogger Tim Urban created such a calendar with nearly forty-seven hundred blocks in it. Each represents a week in a human life. Not satisfied, Urban used this tool to depict how many weeks random famous people lived.

You may not be surprised to find a group of elite musicians didn’t make it past fifteen hundred weeks (or thirty years). The group included Amy Winehouse, Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, Jim Morrison, and Kurt Cobain.

But I’m sure you can add more. For some reason, whatever power amplifies musicians’ creativity also fuels self-destructive tendencies. Inevitably, one imagines what else they would have created. Well, what if you didn’t have to wonder?

Let’s imagine again. This time it’s your favorite artist — that faded away too soon — singing a song they’ve never performed before.