(Credit: Larry Busacca / Staff / Getty Images Entertainment via Getty Images)
An anonymous, internet-based artist is turning the cast of Spongebob Squarepants into modern-day musicians with the help of AI.
The artist, dubbed Glorb, has 968,400 monthly listeners on Spotify as of this writing and an Instagram that bio reads: "Better than all these 'real' rappers?." Their number one song, "The Bottom 2," has over 11 million streams and features the manipulated voices of Spongebob, Patrick, and Mr. Krabs rapping against a beat-heavy backdrop, NBC News reports.
(Credit: Spotify)Glorb's top five songs have almost 36 million streams. Spotify pays artists $0.003 to $0.005 per stream, according to Ditto Music, which means Glorb could have made as much as $180,000 for the Spongebob tracks.
Glorb also has a strong presence on YouTube, where ads help turn these AI tunes into cash. The "Eugene" music video, a reference to Mr. Krabs' first name, has over 6.6 million views and opens with a faux scene of a newscaster reporting on a shooting at the Chum Bucket, the restaurant run by Mr. Krabs' rival Plankton.
The images and voices are indistinguishable from the real cartoon—save for the violent references and frequent swearing. It's a steep departure from the original cartoon, including Spongebob's epic musical performance in 2001 in the episode "Band Geeks," shown in the video below.
Glorb is not affiliated with Paramount-owned Nickelodeon, according to NBC News, raising potential copyright infringement concerns. Legal experts are still debating whether art, music, and writing generated in the style of a public figure is illegal.
When someone created a song using AI-generated voices in the style of artists Drake and The Weeknd, YouTube swiftly took it down because it used a sample of copyrighted music, Billboard reports, not because of the voice manipulation. Meanwhile, other artists are exploring the use of AI for their music. The Beatles, for example, released a new song last fall featuring the AI-enhanced voice of John Lennon, who died in 1980.
For those looking to create their own music using AI, Stability AI this week released a new version of its audio generator, Stable Audio 2.0, which allows artists to enhance their songs with AI and create new ones, The Verge reports. The upgraded tech offers the ability to create more elaborate, 3-minute songs with a proper intro, progression, and outro.